THE ART AND THOUGHT
OF HERACLITUS
The art and thought
of Heraclitus
An edition of the fragments with
translation and commentary
CHARLES H. KAHN
Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
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© Cambridge University Press 1979
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First published 1979
First paperback edition 1981
Reprinted 1983, 1987, 1989, 1993, 1995, 1999, 2001
Library of Congress Catalogue card number: 77-82499
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
Heraclitus
The art and thought of Heraclitus.
1. Philosophy, Ancient
I. Title II. Kahn, Charles H.
182’.4 B220.E5
ISBN 0 521 28645 X paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2004
for Charalampos S. Floratos
a true friend and scholar, master of the
classical tradition and hierophant of
the beauty of Cephalonia
Contents
Preface
Bibliography and abbreviations
General introduction
1 The man, the time and the place
2 The book
3 The doctrine: Heraclitus and his predecessors
Introductory note to text and translation
The fragments
On reading Heraclitus
Commentary on the fragments
Appendices
I Dubious quotations from Heraclitus
II Doxographic reports
III Heraclitus and the Orient, apropos of a recent book
by M.L. West
Notes
Concordances
Indexes
1 General index
2 Index of Passages discussed
288
290
297
303
341
349
353
Preface
Heraclitus was a great prose artist, one of the most powerful stylists
not only of Greek antiquity but of world literature. He was also a
major thinker, perhaps the only pre-Socratic philosopher whose
thought is of more than historical interest today. His reflections upon
the order of nature and man's place within it, upon the problems of
language, meaning and communication still seem profound; and
many of his insights will remain illuminating for the modern reader,
not merely for the specialist in ancient thought.
The aim of the present work is to demonstrate the truth of these
claims by making Heraclitus accessible to contemporary readers as a
philosopher of the first rank. With this in mind I have tried to re-
arrange the fragments in a meaningful order, to give a translation that
reflects as far as possible the linguistic richness of the original, and to
provide a commentary designed to make explicit the wealth of mean-
ing that cannot be directly conveyed in a translation but is latent in
Heraclitus! own words, in his tantalizing and suggestive form of
enigmatic utterance.
The Greek text is given here together with the translation, since
any interpretation is obliged to make continual reference to the orig-
inal wording. And I think it should be possible to read the fragments
in a meaningful order, even if one reads them in Greek. No attempt
has been made to produce a new critical edition, and I have generally
followed the text of Marcovich where he diverges from Diels. But in
some nine cases my text differs from both Diels and Marcovich in
such a way that the interpretation of the fragment is altered, some-
times radically (see p. 26). The notes to the translation are designed
to provide the minimum of information required to understand
Heraclitus! words without a knowledge of Greek. The commentary is
there for those readers who would go further. But in the commentary
too all Greek words have been given in transliteration, and the element
of scholarly controversy has been kept to a minimum (although I
have tried to acknowledge my debt to my predecessors, and to take
x Preface
some account of their views even where I disagree). The aim through-
out has been not to add another book to the secondary literature on
Heraclitus but to make the thought of Heraclitus accessible to the
general reader in the way that a good translation and commentary on
the Divine Comedy tries to make the poetry of Dante accessible to
one who knows little or no Italian.
The comparison to Dante is chosen deliberately. Despite the vast
difference in scale between the two works, and despite the fact that
our text is only partially preserved, even from these shattered remains
we can see that the literary art of Heraclitus’ composition was com-
parable in technical cunning and density of content to that of Dante's
masterpiece. As a thinker, Heraclitus was even more original. And in
both cases the reader who approaches his author without any schol-
arly assistance is likely to get quickly lost. May this serve as my
excuse for such a lengthy commentary to such a brief text.
The first draft was written in Athens in 1974—75, when I held a
senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities
and was in residence as visiting professor at the American School of
Classical Studies. I am happy to express my appreciation to the
Endowment for its support, and to thank the American School, its
then director James McCredie, and the staff of the Blegen Library
for their friendly help and hospitality. I am greatly obliged to the
Research Center for Greek Philosophy and the Academy of Athens
for cordial assistance, and in particular to Dr E.N. Roussos of that
Center who permitted me to use his typescript of Wiese's dissertation,
Heraklit bei Klemens von Alexandrien. Among the colleagues who
improved this work by their criticism I must mention G.E.L. Owen
and Edward Hussey. The translation has benefited from suggestions
by Diskin Clay, Jenny Strauss Clay, Martin Ostwald and John van
Sickle. Barbara Hernnstein Smith kindly served as my Greekless
reader, and made many valuable suggestions for a more idiomatic
translation as well as for the presentation of notes and commentary.
Finally, both the reader and I are indebted to R.J. Mynott of the
Cambridge University Press for showing me how to condense the
commentary; it is not his fault if it is still a bit long.
June 1977 Charles H. Kahn
A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom
is not a meditation upon death but upon life.
Spinoza, Ethics IV.67
The longing not to die, the hunger for personal immortality,
the effort by which we strive to persevere in our own being,
this is the emotional basis for all knowledge and the intimate
point of departure for all human philosophy.
Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life
Bibliography and abbreviations
Adkins, A.W.H. Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values
(Oxford, 1960)
AJP: American Journal of Philology
Anaximander: C.H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek
Cosmology (New York, 1960)
‘A new look at Heraclitus’: C.H. Kahn in American Philosophical
Quarterly 1 (1964), 189—203
Bollack, J. and H. Wismann. Héraclite ou la séparation (Paris, 1972)
Bronowski, J. The Ascent of Man (London, 1973)
Burnet, J. Early Greek Philosophy (4th ed. London, 1930)
Bywater, I. Heracliti Ephesi reliquiae (Oxford, 1877)
Deichgraber, K. ‘Bemerkungen zu Diogenes’ Bericht über Heraklit’,
Philologus 93 (1938), 12—30
Diels, H. Doxographi graeci (Berlin, 1879; reprint, 1929)
Diels, H. Herakleitos von Ephesos (1st ed. Berlin, 1901; 2nd ed.
1909)
DK: H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. by W. Kranz
(Berlin, 1951)
D.L.: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers (ed. H.S. Long,
Oxford, 1964)
Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951)
Frankel, H. Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums (1st
ed. New York, 1951; 2nd ed. Munich, 1962)
Frankel, H. Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denken (3rd ed.
Munich, 1968)
Furley, D. and R.E. Allen (eds.). Studies in Presocratic Philosophy,
Vol. I (London, 1970)
Gigon, O. Untersuchungen zu Heraklit (Basel dissertation, Leipzig,
1935)
Gigon, O. Der Ursprung der griechischen Philosophie (Basel, 1945)
Gomperz, H. ‘Ueber die ursprüngliche Reihenfolge einiger Bruchstücke
Heraklits', Hermes 58 (1923), 20ff.
Bibliography and abbreviations xiii
Guthrie, W.K.C. А History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. I (Cambridge,
. 1962)
Hólscher, U. Anfangliches Fragen: Studien zur frühen griechischen
Philosophie (Góttingen, 1968)
Hussey, E. The Presocratics (London, 1972)
JHS: Journal of Hellenic Studies
Kerschensteiner, J. Kosmos. Quellenkritische Untersuchungen zu den
Vorsokratikern (Munich, 1962)
Kirk, G.S. Heraclitus, The Cosmic Fragments (Cambridge, 1954)
Kirk and Raven: G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers
(Cambridge, 1957)
Lebeck, A. The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Wash-
ington, 1971)
LSJ: Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1925—
40)
Mansfeld, J. Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche
Welt (Assen, 1964)
Marcovich, M. Heraclitus, editio maior (Merida, Venezuela, 1967)
Marcovich, PW: article ‘Herakleitos’ in PW Supplement-Band X
(1965), 246—320
Mondolfo, R. and L. Tarán. Eraclito. Testimonianze e Imitazioni
(Florence, 1972)
North, H. Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek
Literature (Cornell, 1966)
‘On early Greek astronomy’: C.H. Kahn in JHS 90 (1970), 99—116
Powell, J.E. А Lexicon to Herodotus (Cambridge, 1938; reprint,
Hildesheim, 1960)
PW: Real Encyclopádie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed.
Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll (Stuttgart, 1894— )
Reinhardt, K. Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Phil-
osophie (Bonn, 1916; reprint, 1959)
Reinhardt, K. Vermächtnis der Antike. Gesammelte Essays zur Phil-
osophie und Geschichtsschreibung, ed. C. Becker (Göttingen, 1966)
Schleiermacher, F. Herakleitos der dunkle, von Ephesos, in Sämtliche
Werke Abt. III, Bd. 2 (Berlin, 1839), pp. 1—146
Snell, B. Die Entdeckung des Geistes (8rd ed. Hamburg, 1955)
Snell, B. ‘Die Sprache Heraklits’, Hermes 61 (1926), 353—81; in
Gesammelte Schriften (Gottingen, 1966)
Stokes, M.C. One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Cambridge,
Mass., 1971)
The Verb ‘Be’in Ancient Greek: C.H. Kahn, The Verb ‘Be’ and its
xiv Bibliography and abbreviations
Synonyms, Part 6, ed. J.W.M. Verhaar (Foundations of Language
Suppl. Series, Vol. 16, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1973)
Verdenius, W.J. ‘A psychological statement of Heraclitus’, Mnemosyne,
Series 3.11 (1943), 115—21
Vlastos, С. ‘On Heraclitus’, AJP 76 (1955), 337—68, reprinted in part
in Furley and Allen
von Arnim, H. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 3 vols. (Leipzig,
1903—5)
Walzer, R. Eraclito, Raccolta dei frammenti (Florence, 1939; reprint,
1964)
West, M.L. Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford, 1971)
Wiese, H. Heraklit bei Klemens von Alexandrien (Kiel dissertation,
1963, typescript)
Zeller-Nestle: E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in threr geschicht-
lichen Entwicklung, I, 6th ed. by W. Nestle (Leipzig, 1919—20)
Zuntz, G. Persephone. Three Essays on Religion and Thought in
Magna Graecia (Oxford, 1971)
General introduction
1 The Man, the Time, and the Place
The details of Heraclitus’ life are almost completely unknown. Reli-
able information is limited to the fact that he was a native of Ephesus,
on the coast of Asia Minor north of Miletus, and that his father's
name was Bloson. His approximate date is fixed by a synchronism
with the reign of Darius, 521 to 487 B.C.; his traditional ‘acme’ in
the 69th Olympiad, 504—501 B.C., is probably nothing more than a
simplified version of the same synchronism.! The rough accuracy of
this date, on the threshold of the fifth century, is guaranteed by frag-
ment XVIII (D. 40), where Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus
are cited as older contemporaries or figures of the recent past. All
three men seem to have died between 510 and 480 B.C.? The book
dates itself, then, in or near this period. The same approximate date
could be inferred from the presence or absence of various philosophi-
cal influences: there are clear debts to the sixth-century Milesians, to
Pythagoras and Xenophanes, but none to Parmenides or to any
thinker of the fifth century.
The ‘life’ of Heraclitus by Diogenes Laertius is a tissue of Hellen-
istic anecdotes, most of them obviously fabricated on the basis of
statements in the preserved fragments. (The unusually disgusting
reports of his final illness and death reveal a malicious pleasure in
mocking a figure whom the Stoics venerated as the source of their
own philosophy.) Suggestive, if not entirely credible, are the stories
which describe Heraclitus as refusing to engage in politics or to legis-
late for Ephesus, in sharp contrast with the public activities of most
early philosophers. Such stories may reflect no more than the
expressions of contempt for his fellow-citizens found, for example,
in LXIV (D. 121). A related anecdote, probably more worthy of
belief, tells us that he relinquished the hereditary and largely honor-
ific title of ‘king’ to his younger brother.? If true, this would imply
that Heraclitus was the eldest son of one of the most aristocratic
2 General introduction
families in Ionia, the Androclids, who traced their descent back to
Androclus, son of King Codrus of Athens, reputed leader of the
Ionian migration to Asia Minor and founder of Ephesus.
Heraclitus is said to have deposited his book as a dedication in the
great temple of Artemis, where the general public would not have
access to it.* The dimensions of this archaic Artemesium, built not
long before Heraclitus’ birth, are still recognizable in the picturesque
remains of a later rebuilding: the sheer scale of the enterprise is evi-
dence for the wealth, the power, and the civic pride of Ephesus in
the middle of the sixth century.? The temple was constructed about
560 B.C. ‘in emulation of the temple of Hera which had just been
built on Samos, but larger — indeed one of the largest ever to be
attempted by a Greek architect'.6 This architectural rivalry between
the new Ephesian temple and its slightly older neighbor, the Heraion
of Samos, prefigures a generation in advance the philosophic emu-
lation that will oppose Heraclitus to his famous Samian predecessor,
Pythagoras. (Compare XVIII, D. 40 and XXV—XXVI, D. 129 and 81.)
Like other Ionian cities of Asia Minor, the destiny of Ephesus in
the sixth century was linked to the rise of Lydia as dominant power
under Croesus, and to the latter's overthrow by Cyrus the Persian in
547 or 546 B.C. Ephesus seems to have remained on good terms with
the ruling powers in the east. Croesus of Lydia contributed to the
construction of the Artemesium. And when her great neighbor
Miletus was destroyed by the Persians after the disastrous Ionian
revolt of 494, Ephesus was spared. In the earlier period Miletus had
surpassed all other Ionian cities in maritime enterprise and colonial
expansion, while serving at the same time as the birthplace for west-
ern science and philosophy: it was in sixth-century Miletus that
Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes created the tradition of
natural philosophy. The destruction of Miletus at the beginning of
the fifth century left Ephesus as the major Greek city of Asia Minor,
a position she retained until the end of antiquity, as we can see today
from the resurrected splendor of her Roman ruins.
It was in this opulent city, in the days of rivalry between Ephesus,
Samos, and Miletus, under Persian control but before the unsuccess-
ful Ionian revolt, that Heraclitus grew up as the eldest son of the
noblest family in the city. (The presence of the Persians in and around
Ephesus may be reflected in a scornful reference to mago: in D. 14.
See below on CXV.) We have no information on the struggles between
the poor and the rich, the pro-Persian and the anti-Persian parties
that must have dominated the civic life of Ephesus at this time.
The book 3
Heraclitus' attack upon his fellow-citizens for the expulsion of
Hermodorus (in LXIX, D. 12) certainly presupposes local autonomy
and probably also some form of popular government. Heraclitus will
himself have had small sympathy for democracy understood in the
Greek sense as rule by the greater number, or by the lower classes, as
we see from his contemptuous reference to the démos or ‘mob’ in
LIX (D. 104). On the other hand, there is no reason to think of him
as an unconditional partisan of the rich.” The fragments and the later
anecdotes agree in portraying him as an observer audessus de la
mélée, withdrawn from competing factions. I imagine his civic atti-
tude by analogy with the quasi-neutral stance of Solon, but without
any of the active political involvement of the latter. Solon saw him-
self as a mediating force, opposing the excesses of the rival parties,
‘standing like a boundary mark between the warring factions’ (fr.
25) in order to preserve the common interests of the city as a whole.
So Heraclitus, who discovered in what is shared or common to all (to
xynon) the essential principle of order in the universe, recognized
within the city the unifying role of the nomos, the structure of civic
law and moral custom which protects the demos as the city wall pro-
tects all the inhabitants of the city (LXV, D. 44). The only political
attitude which we can safely extrapolate from the fragments is a
lucid, almost Hobbesian appreciation of the fact that civilized life
and communal survival depend upon loyalty to the nomos, the law
in which all citizens have a share (XXX, D. 114), but which may be
realized in the leadership of a single outstanding man.®
2 The Book
Heraclitus is, as Diels put it, ‘the most subjective and, in a sense, the
most modern prose author of antiquity’.2 A loner among a gregarious
race, he seems to have had no personal disciples or associates. (One
anecdote has him fleeing human society in disgust and going to live
like a hermit in the mountains.) In a literary age which we think of as
still primarily ‘oral’, Heraclitus’ influence made itself felt exclusively
through the power of his written word. Within a generation or two
‘his book acquired such fame that it produced partisans of his doc-
trine who were called Heracliteans’.!° The best known of fifth-
century Heracliteans is Cratylus of Athens, a rather taciturn partici-
pant in the Platonic dialogue that bears his name, whose eccentric
ideas are reported more fully by Aristotle (Metaphysics 1010211).
Aristotle strangely names Cratylus as one of Plato's teachers (ibid.
4 General introduction
987232), perhaps because he regarded him as a source of the
Heraclitean influence which he rightly recognized in Plato's own
thought. The stylistic impact of Heraclitus’ book is well documented
in fifth-century literature, notably in the fragments of Democritus,
several of which seem to be composed as a direct response to state-
ments by Heraclitus.!! The Hippocratic treatise On Regimen, prob-
ably from the same period, shows a more systematic attempt to
imitate the enigmatic, antithetical style of Heraclitus’ prose.1? There
is enough evidence for widespread interest in Heraclitus among the
intellectuals who represent what is called the Enlightenment of the
late fifth century B.C. to establish the plausibility, if not the literal
truth, of the story that it was the tragedian Euripides himself who
gave the book to Socrates and asked for his opinion of it.1?
It is in the fourth-century works of Plato and Aristotle that we
find the first detailed discussion of Heraclitean doctrine, but few
literal quotations from his book. The doctrine itself is seen from a
perspective far removed from the intellectual atmosphere of the early
fifth century. For Plato Heraclitus is the theorist of universal flux
(panta rhei ‘all things flow’) in contrast to Parmenides, the partisan
of a fixed and stable reality. For Aristotle Heraclitus was a material
monist who derived the entire physical world from fire as its under-
lying element. Both characterizations cast a long shadow over later
readings of Heraclitus’ text. Before turning to the book itself, I will
briefly survey its influence over the next few centuries and indicate
the principal sources from which our knowledge of it is derived. Like
all Greek prose authors before Herodotus and all philosophical
writings before Plato, the original text of Heraclitus is lost. We are
entirely dependent upon quotations, paraphrases, and reports in later
literature that happens to have survived the collapse of ancient civi-
lization and the destruction of its papyrus libraries.
A full account of Heraclitus’ doctrine as he understood it, along
the lines traced by Aristotle, was given by the latter’s pupil Theo-
phrastus in his great doxographical survey, The Opinions of the
Natural Philosophers (Physikon Doxat). Theophrastus’ own work is
lost, but a good excerpt from the relevant sections, including close
paraphrases of several extant fragments, is preserved in Diogenes
Laertius’ Life of Heraclitus, IX.7—11 (translated below in Appendix
IIA). The high point of Heraclitus’ philosophical influence was
reached a generation later in the work of Zeno, the founder of the
Stoic school in the early third century B.C., and in that of Zeno's
successor Cleanthes. Cleanthes wrote a commentary on Heraclitus in
The book 5
four books, of which no certain trace has been preserved; but the
surviving sections of his famous Hymn to Zeus contain elaborate
echoes of Heraclitean phrasing and imagery.l* The Stoics saw
Heraclitus through the deforming lens of their own system, but that
system was itself based upon a deep study of his written words. I
believe the Stoic interpretation is, in its broad outlines, more faithful
to Heraclitus’ own thought than is generally recognized. In their dog-
matic way, and without his subtlety of thought and expression, the
Stoics are the true Heracliteans of antiquity.
Interest in Heraclitus remained intense throughout the Hellenistic
period, partly but not exclusively as a result of Stoic influence.
Diogenes (IX.15) lists seven other authors who wrote commentaries
on the book.!5 By the fourth century B.C. Heraclitus had acquired
the status of a literary classic, a status which he kept as long as ancient
civilization endured.
The various full-length commentaries are lost, and the earliest
extant author to quote extensively from Heraclitus is Plutarch, the
Platonic philosopher and biographer of the late first century A.D.
The work was still familiar in the next century, as we can see from
many quotations and from the witty parody by Lucian in his Sale of
Philosophic Lives, which reflects — and presupposes on the reader's
part — an accurate knowledge of the text.!6 The most abundant and
most faithful quotations are found in the works of two Christian
bishops writing about A.D. 200: Clement of Alexandria and Hippo-
lytus of Rome. Several good verbatim citations are preserved by
another early Church father, Origen of Alexandria. Plotinus in the
third century A.D. and other later Neoplatonists also quote from
Heraclitus, but they are not much concerned with literal citation.
Our last important source of original fragments is the anthology of
wise sayings on moral topics put together by John Stobaeus in the
fifth century A.D., almost a millenium after the original composition
of the book.
Stobaeus is probably drawing upon earlier anthologies; and other
late authors may have got their quotations at second hand. (Origen
tells us he is citing Heraclitus from the pagan philosopher Celsus; and
Porphyry once quotes the text from a neo-Pythagorean named
Numenius.) But I see no reason to doubt that down to the time of
Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was
available in its original form to any reader who chose to seek it out.
Some authors obviously made selections of quotations for particular
purposes, like the excerpts in Hippolytus (who wants to show that
6 General introduction
Heraclitus is the source of a Christian heresy) and in Sextus Empiricus,
who presents Heraclitus as a Stoic rationalist in epistemology. The
selection of quotations in Diogenes' Life of Heraclitus (IX.1—2) is
motivated by the special interest in illustrating the philosopher's per-
sonality. The existence of such excerpts has led some modern scholars
to suppose that the work circulated in Stoic or Hellenistic ‘editions’.
But it is one thing to cite a few passages for some special purpose,
and another thing to edit or rearrange the text as a whole. For the
latter there is really no evidence. The book itself must have been so
short that the project of an abridged edition would have had no
point. Plutarch and Clement both know Heraclitus by heart, and
frequently quote him from memory. It seems obvious that these two
extraordinarily learned and literary authors each possessed his own
copy of the book. The same may be true for others who quote from
memory, as Marcus Aurelius does in the second century A.D. and
Plotinus a century later.
Is it possible to form some general idea of a work that was so con-
tinuously read, quoted, imitated, and interpreted for more than seven
centuries, and from which we have nearly a hundred literal citations?
Early editors, such as Bywater, tried to group the fragments by sub-
ject matter.18 After 1901, however, the standard arrangement became
that of Diels, who lists the fragments in alphabetical order according
to the name of the author citing them. This apparently irrational pro-
cedure can be justified on sound philological grounds. Recognizing
that any arrangement by subject matter was to some extent arbitrary,
Diels wished above all to avoid imposing any personal interpretation
upon his edition of the texts. In fact, by the atomistic character of
his arrangement he has largely succeeded in imposing his own view of
Heraclitus’ work as lacking in literary structure. For Diels was moti-
vated not only by the impossibility of reconstructing the original
sequence of the fragments. He also called attention to their aphoristic
style, their resemblance to the sayings of the Seven Sages, and (with
Nietzsche's Zarathustra in mind) he suggested that these sentences
had originally been set down in a kind of notebook or philosophical
journal, with no literary form or unity linking them to one another.
He thus implied, after all, that the chaotic pattern of his arrangement
gave a true picture of Heraclitus’ own composition. In the case of
Heraclitus, arrangement and interpretation are inseparable from one
another, as Diels saw in the work of his predecessors. His mistake
was to imagine that his own order could be an exception.
The arrangement of the fragments presented here is based upon a
The book 7
different assumption: that Heraclitus’ discourse as a whole was as
carefully and artistically composed as are the preserved parts, and
that the formal ordering of the whole was as much an element in its
total meaning as in the case of any lyric poem from the same period.
The true parallel for an understanding of Heraclitus' style is, I suggest,
not Nietzsche but his own contemporaries, Pindar and Aeschylus.
The extant fragments reveal a command of word order, imagery, and
studied ambiguity as effective as that to be found in any work of
these two poets. I think we can best imagine the structure of
Heraclitus! work on the analogy of the great choral odes, with their
fluid but carefully articulated movement from image to aphorism,
from myth to riddle to contemporary allusion. Yet the intellectual
unity of Heraclitus’ composition was in a sense greater than that of
any archaic poem, since its final intent was more explicitly didactic,
and its central theme a direct affirmation of unity: hen panta einai,
‘all things are one’. The content of this perfectly general formula
seems to have been filled in by a chain of statements linked together
not by logical argument but by interlocking ideas, imagery, and
verbal echoes. Theophrastus found the result ‘incomplete and incon-
sistent', but he was looking for a prosaic exposition of physical
theories.!9 Heraclitus is not merely a philosopher but a poet, and one
who chose to speak in tones of prophecy. The literary effect he
aimed at may be compared to that of Aeschylus' Oresteia: the solemn
and dramatic unfolding of a great truth, step by step, where the sense
of what has gone before is continually enriched by its echo in what
follows.?0
That Heraclitus’ discourse possessed an artistic design of this type
can scarcely be demonstrated, but is strongly suggested by clear evi-
dence of artistry in every fragment where the original wording has
been preserved. The impression that the original work was a kind of
commonplace book, in which sentences or paragraphs were jotted
down as they occurred to the author, is largely due to the fact that
Heraclitus makes use of the proverbial style of the Sages, just as he
invokes the enigmatic tones of the Delphic oracle. But Heraclitus has
many literary strings to his bow; he does not always speak in riddles
or aphorisms. Among the quotations are four or five long passages of
several connected sentences. Fragment I is a carefully wrought proem,
which suggests the beginning of a well planned book.?! XXX (D.
114) exhibits a complex literary structure elaborated by word play,
phonetic resonance, and syntactical ambiguity. And other long
quotations show that Heraclitus' prose could be supple and ironic as
8 General introduction
well as massive and stately. XXII (D. 56) reports a traditional story
in a narrative style that suggests the naive manner of a folk tale.
CXVII (D. 5) is unique in its unrestrained sarcasm on the subject of
blood purification and praying to man-made gods. The nearest paral-
lel to such plainness of speech is in LXIV (D. 121), where the out-
burst on the men of Ephesus who deserve hanging utilizes, but does
not exemplify, the proverbial style of wisdom literature.
This diversity of artistic technique does not prove that the work as
a whole was carefully composed. It does indicate that Heraclitus was
master of his medium and could impose an artistic shape upon it if
he chose. And there is a general consideration that tells strongly in
favor of his having done so. If we survey the plastic and literary arts
of archaic Greece, we are struck in almost every case by the remark-
able sense of form that characterizes the individual work. Since the
pre-classical notion of poetic structure does not coincide with the
logical or psychological pattern of beginning, middle and end that is
typical of later Greek literature, scholars have not always recognized
this older style of literary form, just as they once failed to appreciate
the peculiar dynamism of archaic sculpture. But today this notion of
archaic form has become familiar to us again, in part from its redis-
covery by artists working in our own century. Whether we are con-
sidering an ode of Pindar, a narrative in Herodotus, or a sculptured
frieze, it would be difficult to find an art work from archaic Greece
that is finely wrought in detail but unshapely as a whole.
The preceding argument tends to show that the fragments were
originally arranged in a significant order. It does not claim to show
that the original order has been recovered here. The present arrange-
ment is largely my own contrivance, the result of much trial and
error, and it has no special title to historical authenticity. I have
worked on the assumption that, if Heraclitus’ own order was a mean-
ingful one, it is the interpreter's task to present these incomplete and
shattered fragments in the most meaningful order he can find. How
close I have come to duplicating Heraclitus’ own order may depend
in part upon how successful I have been in grasping his meaning.??
There are, however, a few formal points of reference on which I
have relied. The existence of an introduction is guaranteed by frag-
ment I, which suggests that Heraclitus' initial emphasis was upon
men's failure to grasp the universal logos which he proclaims. Accord-
ingly, I have grouped the fragments of a critical and polemical nature
at the beginning. Following a hint of Reinhardt, I take XXXVI (D.
50) as the transition from this introduction to the exposition
The doctrine 9
proper.?? For the structure of the exposition itself, there is one
much-maligned piece of external evidence: ‘the book is divided into
three discourses (/ogoz), on the universe, on politics [and ethics] , and
on theology'.2* I have followed this clue by presenting the more
explicitly cosmological statements immediately after the introduc-
tory polemic, and reserving for the end those fragments which refer
to cult and deity. Since in my view Heraclitus! psychology is insep-
arable from his theology, I have put most of the fragments dealing
with the psyche immediately before the last section on the gods.
3 The Doctrine: Heraclitus and his Predecessors
From the time of Cratylus and Plato with their special interest in the
doctrine of flux, down to the Christian Church fathers who were
fascinated by a logos that they could so easily assimilate to the word
that was ‘in the beginning with God’, every generation and every
school construed the doctrine of Heraclitus from its own particular
vantage point. We will return to the deeper problems of hermen-
eutical perspective in the introduction to the commentary, ‘On
reading Heraclitus'. Here I want only to provide a modest historical
corrective: a survey of the early Greek tradition that can help us to
see the thought of Heraclitus against the intellectual background of
his own time and place.
As a first approximation, I distinguish two traditions in the intel-
lectual heritage of Heraclitus, that is, in the body of thought he is
responding to and which he is, by this very response, in the act of
transforming. On the one hand there is the popular tradition of wis-
dom represented by the poets and by the sages of the early sixth
century, including Solon and Bias. Note that Solon was both a poet
and a sage, and that the term sophos, which means ‘wise (man)’,
originally referred to skill in any art, and particularly in the art of
poetry. On the other hand, there is the new technical or scientific
culture which took shape in Miletus in this same century. Under
circumstances which we can only dimly perceive, natural philosophy
began as the work of a handful of men, the circle around Thales and
Anaximander. (The origin of the new tradition as an offshoot from
the older one, as well as the failure of the ancients to distinguish
between the two, is symbolized by the figure of Thales, who is regu-
larly counted among the Seven Sages but also named as the first
natural philosopher.) By the time of Heraclitus at the end of the sixth
century, the scientific tradition had begun to spread from Miletus to
10 General introduction
other neighboring cities (Samos, Colophon, Clazomenae, Ephesus)
and had also been carried to the distant west by Ionian refugees. Thus
sometime in the last half of that century Pythagoras migrated from
Samos to Croton and Metapontum on the southern shores of Italy;
perhaps a bit later, Xenophanes travelled from Colophon to Sicily
and to Elea on the west coast of Italy, below Paestum and Naples.
In the fifth century this philosophical culture will be brought to
Athens by such men as Anaxagoras (from the Ionian city of Clazo-
menae) and the Sophists (including Gorgias, from Sicily). The con-
sequent generalization and popularization of these new ideas, above
all in Athens in the so-called Enlightenment of the late fifth century,
is reflected for us in the extant works of Euripides, Aristophanes,
and Thucydides, and in the earliest Hippocratic treatises. It is carried
on by the orators, philosophers and scientists of the fourth century.
Through the work and influence of Isocrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
and mathematician-astronomers like Eudoxus of Cnidos, this new
scientific and philosophic culture became the intellectual heritage of
the whole civilized west.
It is necessary to bear in mind the fact that this scientific culture,
which every educated person today can take for granted no matter
how little he knows of its technical detail, was something quite new
in Heraclitus’ day and still restricted to a small circle of initiates. For
the most part, the overwhelmingly dominant culture was what I shall
call the popular tradition: the culture of Homer, the poets, and the
early sages.
Neither the popular nor the scientific tradition is internally simple
or uniform, and the radical difference between the two is much
clearer to us than it was to Heraclitus himself.?5 But the originality
of Heraclitus can be fully appreciated only in the light of this dis-
tinction. For both his historical position and his role as a sage for the
centuries are most clearly seen as a bridge between these two tra-
ditions.
The underlying assumption common to both traditions (and to all
Greek thought) is a basic antithesis between gods and men, between
the divine and the human, and an interpretation of the human con-
dition in the light of this contrast. Human nature for the Greeks is
thus essentially characterized by mortality and fallibility: by the
brevity of human life and by the weakness of our intellectual vision.
(Heraclitus is expressing this basic assumption when he says ‘human
nature has no insights, but the divine has them', LV, D. 78.) Where
The doctrine 11
the two traditions diverge most sharply is in their conception of what
is divine. For the poets of the popular tradition the gods have human
form, even though they are vastly superior in strength, clairvoyance,
ability of all sorts, and in their total freedom from the shadow of
death. The clearest symptom (though not the original source) of the
new world view is a radical break with this anthropomorphism. When
Xenophanes complained that ‘Homer and Hesiod ascribed to the
gods everything that is a shame and reproach among men' (fr. 11), he
is not departing in principle from the popular view. For it was part of
this tradition that ‘bards tell many a lie’, and that every poet has the
right to correct his predecessors by rejecting or reshaping a familiar
story.26 The new tendency to require that tales about the gods con-
form with human moral standards can be seen as completing rather
than denying the traditional conception of the gods as superior, but
generally similar, to human beings. And the origins of this moralizing
tendency in Greek theology can be traced back at least as far as the
Odyssey, which opens with a scene in which Zeus complains that
mortals always blame the gods for disaster when they are themselves
at fault. The whole structure of the Odyssey implies the thesis upon
which Hesiod insists with such vehemence: that the actions of Zeus
will respect and enforce recognizable principles of justice.??
But it is something else again when Xenophanes attacks the views
of mortals who 'imagine that the gods are born, and that they have
the same clothes and voice and body as men do’ (fr. 14; cf. frs. 15—
16), and when he announces instead that there is ‘one god, greatest
among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in body nor in
thought' (fr. 23), who remains forever stationary in one place but
'agitates all things with the effortless thought of his mind' (frs. 25—
6). What we encounter here, for the first time in surviving literature,
is a total rejection of the basis upon which the traditional theology
rests. For within this tradition divine genealogies and family connec-
tions, as well as direct personal intervention in the affairs of mankind,
were fundamental features of the popular and poetic conception of
the gods.
This new conception of divinity as birthless and not merely death-
less, as radically different from men in every respect, is essentially
the conception of a cosmic god: a deity conceived not as the supreme
patriarch of a quasi-human family but as the ruling principle of an
orderly universe. And such a view presupposes the work of the
scientists or natural philosophers whom Aristotle called the physikoz,
12 General introduction
students of the nature of things (physis). More specifically, the
theology of Xenophanes presupposes the cosmology of the first
physikoi, the Milesians of the sixth century.28
(a) The popular tradition
Before turning to the new tradition I want to summarize the moral
conceptions of the popular view, as presented in the early poets. The
discussion will be limited to the notion of areté or human excellence,
generally translated ‘virtue’, and to some discrepancies between dif-
ferent notions of excellence attested in the early literature.
The Homeric conception of areté is strikingly expressed in a few
familiar verses. Aen aristeuein kai hypetrochon emmenai айбп is the
advice which a heroic father gives to his son (Шаа VI.208), as Peleus
to Achilles (X1.784): ‘Always be first and best, and ahead of every-
one else.’ This unabashed striving for individual pre-eminence, in the
spirit of an athletic competition or a contemporary race for the
American presidency, is specified for the Homeric hero by two ranges
of activity in which he may achieve distinction: ‘to be a speaker of
words and a doer of deeds’ (Iliad 1Х.443). The deeds are those of
military and athletic prowess; the words are those of wise counsel
and planning. This ancient duality of speech and action remains as a
permanent paradigm for the classification of achievements: it is echoed
in Heraclitus’ opening reference to the ‘words and works (erga) which
I set forth’ (in fragment I), as in the later Sophistic antithesis between
‘in word’ (/ogos) and ‘in deed’ (ergon). It is natural to take the heroes
of the two Homeric epics as supreme examples of success in these
two fields: Achilles as the greatest warrior at Troy, and Odysseus as
the wiliest and most sagacious of mortal men. For a good ‘speaker of
words’ is of course a man of discretion and foresight: language stands
here for intelligence. We may speak of a contrast between the active
and the calculating or the military and the intellectual virtues, as long
as we realize that the intelligence which is prized is the practical use
of words and wits to guide successful action.
Thus we find in the early heroic code, whose grip on classical and
even on modern Greece is extraordinarily persistent, no recognition
of intellectual or moral excellence that might be distinct in principle
from the successful pursuit of whatever goals one has in view. With
some oversimplification, we can say that according to the heroic code
an action is judged wrong, shameful or foolish only if and because it
will lead to failure or disaster for the agent himself.
This statement is oversimplified in two respects. In the first place,
The doctrine 13
the success or failure of the agent is generally inseparable from the
fortunes of his family, his friends, and other close associates. To this
extent heroic individualism falls considerably short of egoism strictly
understood.?? Secondly, and more significantly, the heroic code also
recognizes independent standards of unseemly behavior and unjust
dealing, behavior for which one may rightly be punished or at least
despised. Thus the beating of Thersites in the Ziad, the killing of the
suitors in the Odyssey are both presented as justified punishment for
the violation of a code whose rules cannot be defined exclusively in
terms of success and failure in the heroic competition for areté.
Recent discussions of the early Greek moral tradition have recognized
this distinction between the ‘competitive’ excellences and other more
‘quiet’ or ‘cooperative’ virtues, to use Adkins’ terminology, and have
stressed the extent to which the heroic conception of areté favors the
former over the latter.59 The contrast is real, but shifting and com-
plex; and it cannot be fully captured by any single pair of antithetical
terms. In some cases it seems more accurate to speak of a tension
between individualistic and social virtues; in other cases the oppo-
sition is rather between the virtues of achievement and those of
restraint.
It is the last pair of terms that best characterizes the disparity
between the heroic conception of excellence and a quite different
moral ideal enshrined in the sayings of the Seven Sages and associated
in classical literature with the term sóphrosyné.9! In epic poetry
sóphrosyné (in its old form saophrosyné) has the literal meaning of
‘good sense’ or ‘soundness of mind’, the opposite of folly; it implies
little more than the ability to take rational action in pursuit of one’s
own interest. In later usage, however, the same term comes to denote
a certain restrained mode of speech and action that is socially
esteemed, modest behavior that is likely to meet with approval from
one’s fellow men and also from the gods.?? It is this general prefer-
ence for moderation and restraint which must account for the curious
fact that a word meaning ‘good sense’ comes to designate something
like ‘temperance’. Chastity in sexual matters, moderation in eating
and drinking, are then seen as concrete manifestations of séphrosyné:
a decent sense of one’s place within the social setting and one’s
limitations as a human being. So séphrosyné comes to be the watch-
word for the very un-Homeric conception of excellence summed up
in the aphorisms of the Seven Sages: ‘Know thyself’, ‘Nothing in
excess’, ‘Measure is best’.33
Since the heroic ideal of ‘always be first and best’ is clearly pre-
14 General introduction
dominant in the Homeric epics (composed around 700 B.C.), while
the ideology of self-restraint tends to prevail in later literature begin-
ning with Hesiod and gets canonized in the wisdom of the sixth-
century sages, there has been much speculation about the nature and
the causes of this moral ‘development’.34 My own view is that this
chronological shift from one ideal to the other is more literary than
sociological. The Homeric poems do not portray a real society,
neither that of the poets nor that of any other definite historical
period. They present us with a highly stylized picture in which cul-
tural traits from many periods are combined in an essentially fictive
world, created over the centuries by the tradition of epic poetry and
organized according to principles that are proper to the heroic poem
as such, an art form designed to create and preserve a tradition of
individual glory. Hence the code of individual achievement and unin-
hibited self-assertion is much stronger in the epic world than it can
ever have been in any real society.35
For our purposes, however, it does not matter how far the contrast
between the ideal of self-assertion and the morality of self-restraint is
the result of an ideological shift between two stages in the develop-
ment of Greek society. The important fact is that both views, the
selfish and the social conception of areté, and the deep tension
between the two, were there in the moral bloodstream of the Greeks
long before philosophy appeared on the scene. This discrepancy
between two views of excellence must be taken into account not
only in reading Greek tragedy and Greek moral philosophy but also
in attempting to understand the political careers of men like Themi-
stocles and Alcibiades. Most pertinently, it is in the light of this
ideological tension that we must interpret those utterances of
Heraclitus that refer to excellence and self-knowledge, to the best
men and the vile, and to séphronein or ‘thinking well’.
Here as elsewhere we find that the characteristic achievement of
Heraclitus lies in articulating a view within which the opposites can
be seen together as a unity. For Heraclitus there will be no conflict
between the selfish and the social conception of areté, since the
deepest structure of the self will be recognized as co-extensive with
the universe in general and the political community in particular.
Men may live as if they had a private world of thinking and planning,
but the logos of the world order, like the law of the city, is common
to all (Ш, D. 2 with XXX, D. 114). So true self-knowledge will
coincide with knowledge of the cosmic order, and true self-assertion
The doctrine 15
will mean holding fast to what is shared by all. The best of men,
including those who die in battle in defense of their city, choose ever-
lasting glory as did the Homeric hero. But what they choose is not
their own interest in any private sense but what is common and
shared (to xynon), that ‘one thing in exchange for all’ which rep-
resents the divine unity of the cosmos (XCVII, D. 29 with C, D. 24).
A later generation enlightened by the Sophists will oppose physis
to nomos, nature to convention. And the freethinkers of the late
fifth century will challenge all moral claims and restrictions that rest
upon nomos alone. A precursor of the Enlightenment in other
respects, Heraclitus is in this regard a conservative. For him there is
no split in principle between nomos and nature. As an institution,
law is neither man-made nor conventional: it is the expression in
social terms of the cosmic order for which another name is Justice
(Diké). Heraclitus’ political doctrine can be seen as a development of
Hesiod's old insight, that the order allotted by Zeus to mankind is to
follow justice and shun violence: ‘for to fish and beasts and winged
birds he gave the rule (nomos) that they eat one another, since there
is no justice among them; but to human beings he gave justice (dzké)’
(Works and Days 275ff.).
I note that Heraclitus' restatement of this traditional view marks
the birth of political philosophy proper and the beginnings of the
theory of natural law, which will receive its classic statement by the
Stoics working under his inspiration. Heraclitus’ own formulation is
novel in three respects. He generalizes the notion of Justice to apply
to every manifestation of cosmic order, including the rule of the
jungle by which birds and beasts eat one another (LXXXII, D. 80).
Secondly, human law is conceived as the unifying principle of the
political community, and thus as grounded in the rational order of
nature which unifies the cosmos. Finally, the unique status of human
nomos and the political order is interpreted as a consequence of the
common human possession of speech (logos) and understanding
(noos), that is, as a consequence of the rational capacity to communi-
cate one's thoughts and come to an agreement (homologein in
XXXVI, D. 50, echoing xyn legontas in XXX, D. 114). Thus it is the
very thought and word play of Heraclitus that Plato will echo when,
in defending the natural basis of the moral order against the relativists
and nihilists of his own time, he defines law (nomos) as the arrange-
ment disposed by reason (nous).3® Heraclitus, like Plato, had seen his
city conquered in war and torn by civil strife. He was all the more
16 General introduction
sensitive to the fundamental requirement, for a minimally decent life,
of a human community upon whose legal and moral structure all the
citizens can rely.
(b) The tradition of natural philosophy
This synthesis between the selfish and social ideals of the Greek tra-
dition was made possible by a deeper sense of unity articulated in
Heraclitus’ interpretation of the Milesian cosmology. Despite a wide
range of mythic and poetic antecedents, the Ionian conception of the
world as a kosmos was something new, and its novelty is identical
with the emergence of western science and philosophy as such. What
we find in sixth-century Miletus is a scientific revolution in Kuhn's
sense, the creation of a new paradigm of theoretical explanation, with
the peculiar distinction that this world view is the first one to be
recognizably scientific, so that the innovation in this case is not so
much a revolution within science as a revolution into science for the
first time. The Milesian cosmologies are scientific, in the sense in
which for example the world picture of Hesiod is not, because the
new view of the kosmos is connected both with a geometric model
and with empirical observation in such a way that the model can be
progressively refined and corrected to provide a better explanation
for a wider range of empirical data.
Astronomical observation, like numerical calculation, had long
been practiced with great skill in the East; and for several centuries
after Thales and Anaximander the Greeks remained the pupils of the
Babylonians in this respect. But Anaximander provided what it seems
that no Babylonian and no Greek had ever conceived before him: a
simple geometrical model by which to comprehend the observed
movements of the heavenly bodies. In its general outlines, with the
earth situated in the middle of a system of concentric circles, the
Milesian scheme remained the standard one in scientific astronomy
down to Copernicus. But in all its details it was subject to systematic
and in some cases very rapid improvement. The conception of the
fixed stars as revolving in a stellar sphere, if it does not go back to
Anaximander or Anaximenes, must have been articulated soon after-
wards. The shape of the earth, a flat disk for Anaximander, was soon
recognized as spherical. The explanation of solar and lunar eclipse,
which Anaximander seems to have provided for by an ad hoc hypoth-
esis of fire-holes opening and closing, begins to take on a more accu-
rate optical and geometric form by the time of Parmenides. The true
explanation, according to essentially correct principles of celestial
The doctrine 17
geometry, was given by Anaxagoras within a century after Anaxi-
mander's initial formulation of the model. The Greeks learned how
to compute eclipses from the Babylonians; but they were the first to
explain them. And the very possibility of such an explanation was
created by the idea of a clear geometric model for the heavens.
It is this celestial geometry that constitutes the radically new and
revolutionary aspect of the Milesian cosmology, considered as a con-
tribution to science in the strict sense. And it is revealing for
Heraclitus’ relationship to the new science that it is precisely this
aspect of Milesian cosmology that interested him least. What little we
know about his pronouncements on astronomical matters suggests an
almost deliberate preference for more primitive conceptions: for the
view that the sun is the size of a human foot, that it is extinguished
every night and relit every morning.) What fascinated him in the
new world view was not its geometrical clarity and the possibilities
this offered for the development of exact science, but something else,
something more directly continuous with older, pre-scientific con-
cerns.
The early natural philosophers were not mere theoreticians; they
were practical astronomers, interested in forecasting seasonal changes
of weather, measuring the agricultural seasons, and establishing a
reliable calendar.38 The Babylonians had used the gnómón or sundial
for this purpose, and the Greek tradition has it that the Ionians (more
specifically Anaximander according to some reports) had taken over
the instrument from them and began to make accurate measurements
of the astronomical seasons, as marked by solstice and equinox.??
The result was a progressively more accurate scientific calendar, based
upon a convergence of lunar and solar cycles estimated first at 8 and
then at 19 years. The cycles themselves were probably discovered in
Mesopotamia. But their use in Greece (where the highly accurate
*Metonic' cycle of 19 years was known about 450 B.C.) testifies to an
increasingly sophisticated tradition of observational astronomy.
The astronomical study of daily, monthly, and annual cycles is
connected not only with agricultural applications but also with the
seafaring enterprises in which Miletus excelled: thus Thales was
credited with one of the earliest handbooks (in verse) of Nautical
Astronomy.*9 Both agricultural and navigational concerns require
continuous attention to the atmospheric phenomena of evaporation
and precipitation involved in drought and rain, clouds and wind. It is
characteristic of Ionian cosmology to connect these with other, less
immediately obvious phenomena of earth, sea, and sky — such as the
18 General introduction
silting process that has gradually transformed the ancient harbors of
Ephesus and Miletus into marshy plains 3 and 5 miles from the sea,
or the up-and-down changes in the level of the coastline that are
found throughout the Aegean area, as well as in southern Italy — and
to interpret them all in terms of a conflict between opposing powers:
the wet and the dry, the hot and the cold, the bright and the dark.
The natural philosophers construed this conflict as a cycle of elemental
interchange, within which each of the opposing powers dominates in
turn, as the hot and dry does in summer, the cold and wet in winter.
It was such a cycle that Anaximander described in the one surviving
quotation from his book:
Out of those things [namely, the opposing powers] from which
their generation comes, into these again does the destruction of
things take place, in accordance with what is right and necessary;
for they make amends and pay the penalty to one another for
their aggression (adzkia, injustice) according to the ordinance of
Time. (DK 12.B1)
Here the pattern of physical change and transformation, the birth of
what is new and the death of what is old, is seen as a conflict regu-
lated by an ‘ordinance of time’, where the contestants appear in turn
as victor and vanquished. And this ordering is itself described in the
language of justice, where the wrongdoer must pay the penalty for his
aggression or excess. This Milesian notion of cosmic order as one of
opposition, reciprocity, and inevitable justice, is faithfully taken over
by Heraclitus, with all its poetic resonance and association with older,
mythical ideas: ‘War is shared [for the killer will be killed in his turn],
and [hence] Conflict is Justice.' (See LXXXII, D. 80, with commen-
tary.)
I have so far characterized the new Ionian cosmology by three
fundamental features: (1) a geometric model for the heavens, (2)
observation and numerical measurement of astral cycles, and (3) the
interpretation of physical change as a conflict of elemental powers
within a periodic order of reciprocity and symmetry recognized as
just. To these must be added a fourth, less original feature: the ten-
dency to explain the present state of affairs by deriving it from some
initial situation or first beginning. In place of Hesiod's theogony, the
natural philosophers give us cosmogony. The reports on Anaximander
and the quotations from Anaxagoras show that Ionian cosmology
began, like Hesiod and the book of Genesis, ‘in the beginning’. It
described the emergence of the world order as a gradual process of
generation or development from an arché, a starting point or ‘what
The doctrine 19
came first of all' (Theogony 115). And there is some evidence to
suggest that Anaximander, like Empedocles and the atomists later,
applied the principle of symmetry to foresee a reversal of the cosmic
process, so that the earth which had emerged from the sea would sink
into it again, and perhaps the whole world process might begin anew.*!
These four principles characterize the original Greek conception of
the natural world as a kosmos, an orderly arrangement whose struc-
ture can be rationally understood. For the early cosmologists, as later
for Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, this conception entailed a fifth
principle to which I have alluded: the idea of the cosmos brought
with it the idea of the cosmic god.*? Although this new theological
view, with its radical departure from the traditional notion of the
gods, is first clearly attested in the surviving fragments of Xenophanes,
it seems likely that here too Anaximander was the precursor. For we
are told that he described his primary cosmic principle, the apeiron
or Boundless, as eternal and unaging, which is to say divine. And he
said of this divine principle that it ‘circumscribes all things and steers
them all’ (DK 12.A 15).
Now if Heraclitus shows little interest in the geometric model for
the heavens or the scientific explanation of nature in detail, his
thought is nevertheless penetrated by the new conception of the cos-
mos. Although not himself a physikos or natural philosopher proper,
his own system can only be understood as a response to the world
view of the Milesian physicists. This will appear most clearly if we
compare his doctrine of Fire with the latest Milesian cosmology, that
of Anaximenes.
In place of the indeterminate Boundless of Anaximander, Anaxi-
menes proposed the more definite physical form of aér as starting
point for the cosmic process. Before the word come to denote
atmospheric air, aér had meant ‘mist’ or ‘vapor’; and Anaximenes
must have chosen this principle because of its close association with
the atmospheric cycle of evaporation and condensation. He appears
to have taken that cycle as the paradigm for understanding physical
change in general and explaining the origin of the world order: all
things are derived from aér by being condensed through cooling or
by being rarefied through heating.*? This doctrine of Anaximenes,
restated in later conceptual terms by Diogenes of Apollonia in the
next century, was taken by Aristotle as the pattern for the material
monism which he ascribes to most of the early physikoz. Thus Thales
is said to have derived all things from water, as Anaximenes and
Diogenes derived everything from air. And Heraclitus is named
20 General introduction
together with a certain Hippasus of Metapontum as having chosen
fire as the starting point (Met. A 3, 983b —984a). This interpretation
of Heraclitus! doctrine by analogy with that of Anaximenes is more
fully stated in the Theophrastean doxography in Simplicius:
They [sc. Hippasus and Heraclitus] produce all things from fire by
thickening and rarefaction and they dissolve them back into fire,
maintaining that this is the underlying nature or substrate of things.
For Heraclitus says all things are an exchange (amoibe) for fire.
(DK 22.A 5)
The last sentence of this report is a paraphrase of XL (D. 90): ‘All
things are requital (antamoibé) for fire, and fire for all things, as
goods for gold and gold for goods.’ Thus Theophrastus, following the
example of Aristotle, understood Heraclitus’ doctrine of fire as the
statement of a physical theory along the lines of Anaximenes and
Diogenes of Apollonia, but differing from them by the substitution
of fire for air. And in doing so, Theophrastus was both right and
wrong. For the assertion that all things are exchanged for fire must
have been intended as an allusion to Anaximenes’ doctrine; just as
statements like ‘for water it is death to become earth, but out of
earth water arises’ (CII, D. 36), or the listing of sea, earth and light-
ning storm as ‘reversals’ of fire (XXXVIII, D. 31A) and the statement
that ‘sea pours out, and it measures up to the same amount it was
before becoming earth’ (XXXIX, D. 31B) can only be understood by
reference to Ionian theories of elemental transformation.** Such
texts provided a prima facie case for grouping Heraclitus together
with the natural philosophers. Theophrastus' mistake (continued in
the tradition, both ancient and modern, that treats Heraclitus’ doc-
trine of fire as a physical theory of the same sort as Anaximenes’)
lies in ignoring the poetic and paradoxical nature of these statements
concerning elemental change, and thus treating the mode of
expression as irrelevant to the meaning. To make such a mistake is to
disregard the hint that Heraclitus himself had given in speaking of the
oracle which ‘neither declares nor conceals but gives a sign’ (XXXIII,
D. 93). The sign, in Heraclitus’ case, is the very form of his discourse,
the nature of the logos which he has composed as an expression of
his own view of wisdom, in contrast to that piling up of erudition
which he despises as polymathié, ‘the learning of many things’, in the
work of his predecessors. It is precisely in the use of such words as
antamoibé ‘requital’ and tropa: ‘turnings’, ‘reversals’, as in the descrip-
tion of elemental change as a cycle of ‘birth’ and ‘death’ with the
soul (psyché) placed both at the beginning and at the end of the cycle
The doctrine 21
(CII, D. 36), that Heraclitus gives the sign of his own deeper mean-
ing. These signs, and the riddling nature of his whole discourse, were
systematically ignored by Theophrastus and the doxographers who
followed him. Theophrastus could only regard the paradoxical style
of the work as the symptom of some mental derangement, some
melancholia, which caused Heraclitus to express himself ‘sometimes
incompletely and sometimes in inconsistent fashion'.*5
We come closer to a correct reading of the signs with a Hellenistic
critic named Diodotus, who declared that the book was not about
the nature of things (peri physeos) after all but about man's life in
society (peri politeias), and that the physical doctrines serve only as
illustration.*® This is an overstatement, but it points in the right
direction. Diels came still closer to the mark when he observed that
Heraclitus was interested only in the most general conceptions of
Ionian physics, and that his real starting point was 'I went in search
of myself.' Once he had encountered the law of the microcosm within
himself, ‘he discovered it for a second time in the external world’.47
I believe that Diels was right in locating the central insight of
Heraclitus in this identity of structure between the inner, personal
world of the psyche and the larger natural order of the universe. The
doctrines of fire, cosmic order, and elemental transformations serve
as more than illustrations; but they are significant only insofar as
they reveal a general truth about the unity of opposites, a truth
whose primary application for human beings lies in a deeper under-
standing of their own experience of life and death, sleeping and
waking, youth and old age. If I have chosen as epigraph for this book
two quotations from Spinoza and Unamuno, that is not because they
assert doctrines with which Heraclitus would have agreed but because
they locate more precisely the focal point of his own philosophical
reflection: a meditation on human life and human destiny in the con-
text of biological death. In Heraclitus’ view such an understanding of
the human condition is inseparable from an insight into the unifying
structure of the universe, the total unity within which all opposing
principles — including mortality and immortality — are reconciled. It
is this insight and this understanding which Heraclitus prizes as wis-
dom (sophia) and which his whole discourse struggles to express. The
war of opposites, the cosmic fire, the divine one which is also wisdom
itself or *the wise one' — all these provide the framework within
which human life and death are to be understood, and to be under-
stood means to be seen in their unity, like day and night (XIX, D.
57). The ignorance of men lies in their failure to comprehend the
22 General introduction
logos in which this insight is articulated, the logos which is at once
the discourse of Heraclitus, the nature of language itself, the struc-
ture of the psyche and the universal principle in accordance with
which all things come to pass. Heraclitus' grasp of this insight would
have been impossible without the new, philosophic conception of
cosmic order; and this sets him apart from the older Wise Men. But
he belongs with them in the concern for wisdom as an insight into
the pattern of human life and the limits of the human condition.
What they did not see — and could not see before the birth of natural
philosophy — is that the pattern of human life and the pattern of cos-
mic order is one and the same.
A fuller defense of this interpretation will be the task of the com-
mentary. I conclude these introductory remarks by a glance at the
most striking of the ‘physical’ fragments, in which Heraclitus is
clearly responding to and transforming the doctrines of the natural
philosophers.
The ordering (kosmos), the same for all, no god or man has made,
but it ever was and is and will be: fire everliving, kindled in
measures and in measures going out. (XXXVII, D. 30)
Modern interpreters who look for a physical theory in Heraclitus have
seen here a denial that the world order was generated as a result of
any cosmogonic process such as the other natural philosophers had
assumed. But the emphasis of the wording and imagery suggests some-
thing quite different.
The Milesians were concerned to show how the order of the world
had come into being, how it was maintained, and (very probably) how
it would eventually perish, only to be produced anew out of its
eternal and inexhaustible source. Anaximander had conceived this
order as governed from without, by the primordial Boundless; Xeno-
phanes had replaced the Boundless with an intelligent deity who
moves all things by thought. Heraclitus accepts the Milesian view of a
world order in which the opposition and transformation of elemen-
tary powers is governed by measure and proportion. But he denies
that this order is imposed upon the world by any power from with-
out. Instead, he deifies one of its internal constituents. For to say
that fire is ‘everliving’, that it ‘ever was and is and will be’ is to say,
simply, that it is eternal and divine. Yet Heraclitus insists upon the
fact that this god participates in the changing life of nature, ‘kindled
in measures and in measures going out'. There is a genuine parallel
here to Anaximenes' conception of the primordial Air. But Anaxi-
menes would scarcely have emphasized the extinction of his principle
The doctrine 23
at the very moment that he asserts its eternity; nor would he have
identified his elemental principle with the cosmos as such. What is
striking about Heraclitus’ statement is that it confronts us with the
double paradox of a world order identified with one of its constitu-
ent parts, and an eternal principle embodied in the most transitory
of visual phenomena.
The resolution of these antinomies, concerning what is *whole and
not whole’ (CXXIV, D. 10), what is both mortal and everliving, must
await the fuller commentary. The point of importance here is that
the choice of fire as a substitute for air can scarcely have been motiv-
ated by the desire for a more adequate physical theory: nothing is
literally derived from fire in the way that winds, clouds, and water
may be derived from air. Heraclitus' aim is not to improve the
Milesian cosmology by altering a particular doctrine but to reinterpret
its total meaning by a radical shift in perspective. The advantage of
fire for the new point of view is that it signifies both a power of
destruction and death — as in a burning city or a funeral pyre — and
also a principle of superhuman vitality; a temporary phenomenon
that dies out or is quenched and an eternal principle that is every-
where one and the same, whether in the altar flame, the domestic
hearth, the forest fire lit by lightning, or the blazing torches of war.
By meditating on the fire one who knows how to read oracular signs
can perceive the hidden harmony that unifies opposing principles not
only within the cosmic order but also in the destiny of the human
psyche.
From Pythagoras of Samos, his neighbor and near contemporary,
Heraclitus had learned a new conception of the destiny of the psyche,
and perhaps also a new sense for the power of number, proportion,
and measure in the rational organization of the world. But Pythagoras,
like Xenophanes, provokes his particular scorn, for these two have
tried to expand the philosophy of nature into a general vision of god
and man and have, in his view, conspicuously failed.
It is precisely this task which Heraclitus undertakes. His real sub-
ject is not the physical world but the human condition, the condition
of mortality. But by its participation in the eternal life cycle of nature
and also by its capacity to master this pattern in cognition, the struc-
ture of the psyche is unlimited (XXXV, D. 45). Mortals are immortal,
immortals mortal (XCII, D. 62). The opposites are one; and this
deathless structure of life-and-death is deity itself.
Introductory note to text
and translation
I give here as a ‘fragment’ every ancient citation or report that seems
to provide information about the content of Heraclitus’ book not
otherwise available. Out of these 125 fragments, only 89 qualify as
fully verbatim citations, and even this figure may be a bit too gener-
ous. The other 36 texts, marked here by square brackets, form a
mixed bag. They include partial quotations blended with the citer's
own text, free paraphrases that may or may not preserve some of the
original wording, and some reports of doctrine that do not even
claim to represent Heraclitus' words. Thus this second group of texts
ranges from borderline quotations, that might be counted among the
literal fragments, to doctrinal statements that could be listed with
the doxography (in Appendix II). At either end the division is arbi-
trary. More significant, and less controversial, is the difference in
principle between those passages where we have Heraclitus’ own
words and those where we do not. It is this distinction that I have
tried to mark by the use of square brackets.
The translation aims at giving a readable version of Heraclitus’
text, with as much literal accuracy as is compatible with the primary
goal of not making Heraclitus more obscure in English than he is in
Greek. In some cases, for example in LXXIII, D. 58, this means that
the translation will deviate slightly from what I print as the most
plausible text. In five cases (XLII, LX XII, LXXXI, XCV, and CXIII)
I have combined two paraphrases in the translation or rendered the
more reliable version. The glosses to the translation are designed to
provide the minimum of lexical and other information required for a
fair reading of the fragments. All substantive questions of scholarship
and interpretation are postponed to the commentary.
In presenting the Greek text I follow Marcovich’s edition wherever
possible, but without his spacing and occasionally without his punc-
tuation. The critical notes are designed to indicate significant discrep-
ancy between Marcovich (‘M.’) and Diels-Kranz (‘D.’), and my own
divergences from Marcovich. The most important differences are the
26 Introductory note
following. In the case of XXXVII (D. 30), LXIII (D. 49), LXXXII
(D. 80), LXXXVI (D. 86), CVIII (D. 77), CIX (D. 118), and CXXIII
(D. 67), I reject an interpolation or emendation made by Bywater or
Diels and accepted by most subsequent editors (except Bollack-
Wismann, with whom I agree in these cases). In XXXII (D. 112) I
accept the punctuation given by Bollack-Wismann, which crucially
alters the sense. In the desperate case of LXXIII (D. 58) I follow the
text of Kirk, against both Diels and Marcovich.
The fragments
28
I
I (D. 1, M. 1) Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos УП.132
TOU бе Adyou Tovd’ Edvros alet &túveror yivovrat &vOpoxroc Kal
трдоўєр 1) &KOVGAL Kal AKOVOAVYTES TO TQCO TOV" "ywopévcov yap
TAVTWV ката TOV Adyov TOVSE ATE POLOLY EOLKAOGL TELPWMEVOL Kal
ETEWDV Kal Epywv TOLOUTEWY OKOLWY Eyw Sinyedmat ката qUow
dtatpéwp ёкаотоу Kal ppafwv дкос Éxev: TOUS 66 ANOV
avdpwnous Aavdaver OKdGa ёуєрдєртєс̧ ToLovOLY дкоотєр OKdGa
eü60v Tec EmthavdavovTat.
П
П (D. 34, M. 2) Clement, Stromateis У.115.3
à£Uverot AKOVOAPTES KWPOLOW EOLKAOL PATIS AVTOLOL рарторєі
Ta PEOVTAS ATELVAL.
IH
ПІ (D. 2, M. 23b) Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos VIII.138
[5:0 det Exeodat TH kowwqo - Evvds yap 6 Kotvds.] той Adyou ё’
éovros Evvod wovon ot поћћоі coc Ldlav ёҳортєс qpóvngotv.
IV
IV (D. 17, M. 3) Clement, Stromateis II.8.1.
ой yap ppoveovat TOLADTA TOAAOL OKOLOLS EyKUpEOvOLY, обе ua ó0vrec
YLVWOKOVOLV, Ewutotat бё 6okéovot.
Ш With Bywater and Bollack-Wismann, I take the words in brackets as a comment by
Sextus. In the belief that they contain a genuine quotation Bekker inserted <fvvq@, rovréart
TX after то and before когоо; followed by D., M., and others.
IV For dkolots &ykvupéovotv D. reads ókóoot &ykvupeUou; others otherwise. The MSS have
6kócot tykvpocvUovotv.
29
I
Although this account holds forever, men ever fail to comprehend,
both before hearing it and once they have heard. Although all things
come to pass in accordance with this account, men are like the untried
when they try such words and works as I set forth, distinguishing
each according to its nature and telling how it is. But other men are
oblivious of what they do awake, just as they are forgetful of what
they do asleep.
II
Not comprehending, they hear like the deaf. The saying is their wit-
ness: absent while present.
IH
Although the account is shared, most men live as though their think-
ing were a private possession.
IV
Most men do not think things in the way they encounter them, nor
do they recognize what they experience, but believe their own
opinions.
I account: logos, saying, speech, discourse, statement, report; account, explanation,
reason, principle; esteem, reputation; collection, enumeration, ratio, proportion; logos is
translated ‘account’ here (twice) and also in III, XXVII, LX and LXII; it is rendered ‘report’
in XXXV, XXXVI and CI; ‘amount’ in XXXIX.
holds forever: text is ambiguous between ‘this account is forever, is eternal’ and ‘this
account is true (but men ever fail to comprehend)’,
Ш shared: xynos, common, in common, together: cf. same term in VI, XXX, LXXXII,
XCIX.
thinking: phronésis, intelligence, understanding.
IV think: phroneousi, understand, think straight; act with intelligence.
recognize: ginóskousi, know, be acquainted with; a recurrent theme: cf. XIX, XX, XXII,
XXVII, etc.
believe their own opinions: hedutoist dokeousi, lit. ‘seem to themselves (to recognize
and understand)’, or ‘imagine for themselves’: cf. LXXXIV—LXXXV.
30
V
V (D. 71—3, M. 69b!, 4, 3c, 1h!) Marcus Aurelius IV.46
[[&ei той 'HpokXetretov ueuvijo9at . . .
(there follows a version of XLI, D. 76)
иєштодох бё Kai той EmtAavdavopevov ý 1] 660 &yev Kat бт co
цаћота Sinvekas бшХ\ойо (Хбүср тор та Oa 640ucoUvrt) тобто
6Lo«pépovrat, Kat otc Kad’ Nuépav éyKupovat, TabTa афто ёра
yatvetat. Kat бт ov Set orep кабє)боџтас̧ по Kat Xéyew.]]
VI
VI (D. 89, M. 24) Plutarch, De Superstitione 166C
[[2 "HoákAecróc qnot тоїс ёүртүүордош Eva Kai Kowov Koopov eivat,
тоу 6é kouucouévoov ёкаотор elc 1:00 &moorpépeo9ot.] |
VII
VII (D. 18, M. 11) Clement, Stromateis П.17.4
ёду ur) EAaNTat àvéNmLOTOV ойк é£evpr)oet, àve£epeUvmrov ёду Koi
àTODOV.
VIII
VIII (D. 22, M. 10) Clement, Stromateis IV.4.2
xpvoóv oi Susjpevor yiv ToAAHY dpvacovat Kai ebpiakovatv dALyov.
31
V
[[Men forget where the way leads... And they are at odds with that
with which they most constantly associate. And what they meet with
every day seems strange to them . . . We should not act and speak like
men asleep.] ]
VI
[[The world of the waking is one and shared, but the sleeping turn
aside each into his private world.] ]
VII
He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is
trackless and unexplored.
VIII
Seekers of gold dig up much earth and find little.
V From Marcus Aurelius: ‘Always bear in mind what Heraclitus said . . . about the man
who forgets...”
А at odds with: diapherontai, differ from; quarrel with: cf. LXXVIII and CXXIV; most of
чы e seems to be a reminiscence of other fragments (CVI, D. 117; IV, D. 17; and I or VI,
. 89).
VI From Plutarch: ‘Heraclitus says that...’
32
IX
IX (D. 35, M. 7) Clement, Stromateis V.140.5
хр? Ev рала TOAAGY LaTOpas pLAOad форс ávópac elvat Kad’
'HpakXecvrov.
X
X (D. 123, M. 8) Philo, Themistius, etc.
puat KpUTTeadat quet.
XI
XI (D. 47, M. 113) Diogenes Laertius IX.73
ut) eit) tepi T&v ueytarcov ouufjaXAcoueóa.
XII
XII (D. A23, M. 6a!) Polybius IV.40.2
[[офк ёи ёте mpémov et ToLNTaLs Kal uvOoypaqots хођодо: џартоо:
Tepl тоу &yvoovuuévcor, бтєр oi TPO NUGV TETOLNKaGL тєрї тор
TAELOTWV, ANLOTOUS GJupuo yrovuévo»v ra PEXGMEVOL BEBaLWTAaS KATH
Tov 'HpakAecrov.] ]
IX M. excludes ed u&Aa and qiXooógovs &vdpas from the literal quotation.
33
IX
Men who love wisdom must be good inquirers into many things
indeed.
X
Nature loves to hide.
XI
Let us not concur casually about the most important matters.
XII
[[In taking the poets as testimony for things unknown, they are citing
authorities that cannot be trusted.] ]
IX Меп who love wisdom: philosophoi andres, philosophers: cf. sophon, wise, in XXVII,
etc.
inquirers: histores, researchers, investigators; judges; eye-witnesses; Ionian science was
called peri physeós historie, inquiry into the nature of things.
X Nature: physis, character or nature of a thing.
loves: philei, tends; alternate rendering: ‘The true character of a thing likes to be in
hiding.'
ХІ casually: eiké, at random, perhaps with а play here on eikéi, (concur) with likelihood.
XII From Polybius: ‘It would no longer be fitting to take poets and story-tellers as wit-
nesses for things unknown, as our ancestors did in most cases, citing untrustworthy auth-
orities on disputed points as Heraclitus says."
34
XIII
XIII (D. 74, M. 89) Marcus Aurelius IV.46 (following citation V
above)
[ко бт ob Set «coc» matas rokecovoo (sc. TOLELY Kal Xéyetv),
TOUTEOTL ката YAON’ KadOTL Taper qagev.] ]
XIV
XIV (D. 55, M. 5) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.9.5
досу Ges akon padnate, тейт EYW TpOTLMEW.
XV
XV (D. 101a, M. 6) Polybius XII.27.1
[[kara Tov 'HpakXecrov* dpdadpol yap тор (rcov йкр:Вёотєро‘
и&рторес .] ]
XVI
XVI (D. 107, M. 13) Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos
VII.126
коко џарторєс àvOpoxmocou ò parpol Kal cora BapBapovs yvxac
EXOVT WD.
XVII
XVII (D. 19, M. 1g) Clement, Stromateis 11.24.5
akKovaat ойк ёпіотаџєрог O05’ eimetv.
35
XIII
[[We should not listen like children to their parents.] ]
XIV
Whatever comes from sight, hearing, learning from experience: this I
prefer.
XV
[ [Eyes are surer witnesses than ears.] ]
XVI
Eyes and ears are poor witnesses for men if their souls do not under-
stand the language.
XVII
Not knowing how to listen, neither can they speak.
XIII From Marcus Aurelius (continuing V above); alternate rendering: *we should not
«act and speak? like children of our parents, in other words, in the way that has been
handed down to us.'
XIV learning from experience: mathésis, cognate with mathontes, they experience, in IV.
XV From Polybius: ‘According to Heraclitus...’
Eyes i.e. direct experience.
ears i.e. hearsay.
XVI Literally, ‘if they have barbarian souls (psychai)’, souls that do not speak Greek.
For psyché, see on XXXV.
36
XVIII
XVIII (D. 40, M. 16) Diogenes Laertius IX.1
поћоџа din убору ob 5tdacKket · 'Hotoóov yap av €6(5ake Kat
Nudaydpnv, abr(c re Zevopavea тє Kat 'Ekaraitov.
XIX
XIX (D. 57, M. 43) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.10.2
б,баоке\ос бё mTAetorcov ‘Halodos: robrov &m(oravrat TAELOTA
et óévat, Goris Тёрт} Kal ebqpóvmv ойк &yivcokev: ёоті yap Ev.
XX
XX (D. 106, M. 59) Plutarch, Camillus 19.1
[[ 'HoakAetroc emémdntev 'Hotóó6«o тос uév (sc. huépas) ёуадас
TOLOUUÉV(), TAS è qoUAac, WS &yvoobvrt PUOLY ђиёрос̧ utav oDoav.] |
XXI
XXI (D. 42, M. 30) Diogenes Laertius IX.1
Tov тє “Ортрор &qaokev & гор ёк TOV àyovo ёкВаћћєодог коі
pamtfeodat, Kat “Apxtdoxov ӧџоѓос.
37
XVII
Much learning does not teach understanding. For it would have taught
Hesiod and Pythagoras, and also Xenophanes and Hecataeus.
XIX
The teacher of most is Hesiod. It is him they know as knowing most,
who did not recognize day and night: they are one.
XX
[ [Hesiod counted some days as good, others as bad, because he did
not recognize that the nature of every day is one and the same.]]
XXI
Homer deserves to be expelled from the competition and beaten with
a staff — and Archilochus too!
ХУШ Much learning: polymathié, learning many things, cognate with mathontes, mathésis
in IV and XIV; term apparently coined by Heraclitus.
understanding: noos, mind, good sense, as in XXX and LIX.
Hesiod, epic poet of early seventh century B.C., author of Theogony and Works and
Days.
Pythagoras of Samos, philosopher and social leader of late sixth century.
Xenophanes of Colophon, poet and philosopher-theologian of same period.
Hecataeus of Miletus, contemporary world-traveller and rationalizing student of myth,
author of lost works on geography and legendary genealogies.
XIX day and night: referring to Theogony 748—57, where Day and Night meet one
another as mythical figures moving in opposite directions.
XX From Plutarch: ‘Heraclitus attacked Hesiod for counting some days as good . . . ',
referring to Works and Days 765ff., where lucky and unlucky days are distinguished.
XXI beaten with a staff, with a rhabdos, standard instrument of bards and rhapsodes who
competed in poetic performances.
Archilochus, lyric poet and author of comic invectives, seventh century B.C.
38
XXII
XXII (D. 56, M. 21) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.9.5
EENTATNVTAL Ot AVOPWTOL прдсѕ THY уроо тоу Pavepav
TAPAaNANGLWS ‘Opnpw, ös eyévero rcv ‘ENANVWY GOYWTEPOS
т@ртоду, €eKeivóv re yap Tatdes pEtpas KATAKTELVOVTES EENTATNOAV
etndvres · дса evSopev Kal котєћаВоџрер, тодта бто\єтоцєр, доа ёё
olre єдоџрєу ойт’ ёХоВоџєру, тобта pépopev.
XXIII
XXIII (D. 105, M. 63a) Scholia A T in Шаа XVIII.251
[ГНоакћєтос̧. . . &orpoAóyov qnoi róv "Ounpov.] |
XXIV
XXIV (D. 38, M. 63b) Diogenes Laertius 1.23
[[80кє ёе (sc. OaAHS) ката TLVAS протос йотроћоүђоог Kal ђ\№акас
ёкћєіуеєгс Kal тропос mpoeumetv, Gs qnou Е0бтпџос Ev TH тєрї тор
&oTpoAoyovuévo»v іоторід ` 09 €v abrov Kal Zevoyavns Kat 'Hpóóoroc
Sava fer: ua prupet 6' айтор Kat ‘HpakAettos Kat AnudKxptros.| |
XXV
XXV (D. 129, M. 17) Diogenes Laertius VIII.6
Ilu2oyópnc Муос рҳор toropimv ijoknoev dvd ponwvy ANOTA партор
Kal EKAEEAMEVOS raUTac TAS OVYYPAYPAS ётоиђоото EavTOD O0Qnv,
TOAVPAVELNV, KXKOTEXVIND.
XXII Following Bernays, D. and M. bracket the prefix xar- in котєА&бонер, needlessly.
39
XXII
Men are deceived in the recognition of what is obvious, like Homer
who was wisest of all the Greeks. For he was deceived by boys killing
lice, who said: what we see and catch we leave behind; what we
neither see nor catch we carry away.
XXIII
[[Homer was an astronomer.] ]
XXIV
[ [Thales practiced astronomy.] ]
XXV
Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus pursued inquiry further than all other
men and, choosing what he liked from these compositions, made a
wisdom of his own: much learning, artful knavery.
XXII In traditional versions of this story Homer, who is blind, dies of chagrin at not guess-
ing the riddle.
ХХШ From scholia on Шаа XVIII.251: ‘Heraclitus calls Homer an astronomer.’
XXIV From Diogenes Laertius: *Xenophanes and Herodotus express their admiration for
Thales « for his practice of astronomy >. Heraclitus also bears witness to him < for this."
XXV Pythagoras: see on XVIII.
inquiry: historie: see on IX.
much learning: polymathié: see on XVIII.
artful knavery: kakotechnié, the art (techné) of doing evil, another coinage of Heraclitus.
40
XXVI
XXVI (D. 81, M. 18) Philodemus, Rhetorica I, coll. 57, 62
[ [ката Tov 'HpakXecrov kontócov €oriv &pxmyósc.]]
XXVII
XXVII (D. 108, M. 83) Stobaeus III.1.174
OKO0G0c)P AGyous короо ObSELS óqukveirat ES тобто GIOTE YLYVLOKELV
б Tt оорду EOTL, партои KEXWPLOLÉVOV.
XXVIII
XXVIII (D. 101, M. 15) Plutarch, Adversus Coloten 1118C
€6ctqoaqmv eéuecovróv.
XXIX
XXIX (D. 116, M. 15f = 23e) Stobaeus III.5.6
AVOPWTOLOL пао: METEOTL YLVWOKELV ÈWVTOÙS Kal OGXppovetv.
XXVII I punctuate with Bollack-Wismann. Other editors read 871 oopóv tori mávrcv
KEXWPLOMEVOD,
41
XXVI
[[Pythagoras was the prince of imposters.] ]
XXVII
Of all those whose accounts I have heard, none has gone so far as this:
to recognize what is wise, set apart from all.
XXVIII
I went in search of myself.
XXIX
It belongs to all men to know themselves and to think well.
XXVI From Philodemus: ‘Rhetoric . . . is, in the words of Heraclitus, the prince (archégos,
initiator, founder, ring-leader) of imposters'; reference to Pythagoras is not certain.
XXVII accounts: logoi: see on I.
what is wise: alternate punctuation: ‘that the wise is set apart’.
from all: pantón, ambiguous between ‘all men’ and ‘all things’. For sophon, wise, see also
XXXVI, LIV, and CXVIII.
XXIX know themselves: allusion to the Delphic motto gnóthi seauton ‘Know (lit. recog-
nize) thyself’.
think well: séphronein, sound thinking, good sense; moderation, self-restraint; cognate
with phronésis, thinking, intelligence in III, phronein think, act with intelligence in IV and
XXXI.
42
XXX
XXX (D. 114, M. 23a) Stobaeus III.1.179
£v vow Aéyovrac Laxupifeadat хоў тор £uvco TavTwv, дкоотєр
vóuqo TOALS Kal TOAD LOXUPOTEPWS* TPEPOVTAL yap TAVTES oi
avdpumeco. VOOL тд Evos той Belov: kparet yap roooDrov OKdOOV
Déci Kal EkapKEl naoi Kal TEpLylvETat.
XXXI
XXXI (D. 113, M. 23d) Stobaeus III.1.179
évvdv EOTL n&OL TO qpovéew.
XXXII
XXXII (D. 112, M. 23f) Stobaeus III.1.178
Ooxppoveiv APET HEYLOTN Kal opin, ddndéa Aéyetv коі TOLELV
ката PUOL ératovrac.
XXXIII
XXXIII (D. 93, M. 14) Plutarch, De Pythiae Oraculis 404D
0 ёро ой тд uavreióv ёоті TÒ Ev AeNootc ойтє Aéyet oUre KOUTTEL
GAA onuaotvet.
XXXII With Bollack-Wismann I punctuate after coyin and not (as with most editors) after
HEYLOTN.
43
XXX
Speaking with understanding they must hold fast to what is shared by
all, as a city holds to its law, and even more firmly. For all human
laws are nourished by a divine one. It prevails as it will and suffices
for all and is more than enough.
XXXI
Thinking is shared by all.
XXXII
Thinking well is the greatest excellence and wisdom: to act and speak
what is true, perceiving things according to their nature.
XXXIII
The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither declares nor conceals, but
gives a sign.
XXX understanding: noos: cf. XVIII.
shared: xynos: see on III.
by all: pantén: ambiguous gender as in XXVII.
divine one: henos tou theiou, similarly ambiguous between 'the one divine (thing)' and
‘the one divine law’.
suffices for all: pasi, same ambiguity: all things? laws? people?
is more than enough: periginetai, is left over, survives intact; prevails over, surpasses. The
three terms ‘with understanding’ (хуп noó1), ‘what is shared’ (107 xynót) and ‘its law’ (#017
nomói) are linked by an untranslated word play. For the thought cf. LXV.
XXXI Thinking: to phroneein: see on IV.
shared: xynon: see оп Ш.
by all: pasi: ‘all things’ or ‘ali men’, as in the preceding.
XXXII Thinking well: sóphronein: see on XXIX.
excellence: arete, courage, military prowess; nobility, good breeding, distinction; virtue,
moral excellence; alternate punctuation: ‘Sound thinking is the greatest excellence, and wis-
dom is to speak things true and act according to nature by listening «to the logos >.’
XXXIII The lord i.e. Apollo.
44
XXXIV
XXXIV (D. 92, M. 75) Plutarch, De Pythiae Oraculis 397A
[[Z4gvAAo бе uarvouévw oróuaTt Kad’ "Нракћєгтоу àyéXooTo Kal
AKaAAWTLOTA Kal &uUproTa qOeyyouévn ҳіМ№ оор ércv é£ukveirot
TH pwr бга Tov 9eóv.]]
XXXV
XXXV (D. 45, M. 67) Diogenes Laertius IX.7
Vuxns тє{рөтө оор ойк av é£eUpoto TaGaV ётіторєобиєросѕ 660v-
ойто Baduv Aóyov Exet.
XXXVI
XXXVI (D. 50, M. 26) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.9.1
ойк Єцной оАо тор Adyou aKoVGaVTas òuoroyetv Gopdr torv ëv
тарта Eetvat.
XXXVII
XXXVII (D. 30, M. 51) Clement, Stromateis V.103.6
кбонор TOV айтди &т&ртоду OTE TLS Óecv ойтє àvÓpomov
ETOLNGEV, AAA’ HY EL Kal EoTLV Kal EoTat TÜP @є({ оор, ANTOMEVOV
uérpa Kai à Too(evvüuevov uérpa.
XXXVI With some misgiving I accept the usual correction eiva: for ei6évou in the MSS.
XXXVII I give the text of Clement. Since Bywater most editors have added róvóe after
xéouov from an inferior variant found in Simplicius and Plutarch (who do not have róv
офтдь à&mávrcov).
45
XXXIV
[ [The Sibyl with raving mouth utters things mirthless and unadorned
and unperfumed, and her voice carries through a thousand years
because of the god who speaks through her.] ]
XXXV
You will not find out the limits of the soul by going, even if you
travel over every way, so deep is its report.
XXXVI
It is wise, listening not to me but to the report, to agree that all things
are one.
XXXVII
The ordering, the same for all, no god nor man has made, but it ever
was and is and will be: fire everliving, kindled in measures and in
measures going out.
XXXIV From Plutarch: ‘The Sibyl with raving mouth, as Heraclitus says . . . °.
Sibyl, legendary woman who prophesied in trance, possessed by Apollo.
XXXV soul: psyché, life-breath, life; ghost, phantom; spirit, soul.
report: logos: see on I: perhaps ‘so deep is its measure’.
XXXVI wise: sophon: see on XXVII.
report: logos: see on I.
agree: homologein, say the same thing as, agree with, playing here on logos: 'to speak in
agreement with the report that says... °.
XXXVII ordering: kosmos, military array, good order; adornment; world order.
for all: hapanton, either ‘all men’ or ‘all things’, as in XXVII, etc. Alternate version of the
text: ‘This ordering no god nor man has made...’
46
XXXVIII
XXXVIII (D. 31A, M. 53A) Clement, Stromateis V.104.3
птордс< трото{ прото» 9aXa00o, до№аоотс бё тд MEV шоу үп, TO бё
шоо mpnoTnp.
XXXIX
XXXIX (D. 31B, M. 53B) Ciement, Stromateis V.104.5
Vaadaa Ótoxéerat Kal METPEETAL ELS TOV abrÓv Aóyov OKOLOS
Tpdavev hv Ñ yevéodat Yn.
XL
XL (D. 90, M. 54) Plutarch, De E apud Delphous 388D—E
тордс AVTAMOLBN та парта Kal пёр àmavrcov BKWOTEP Xpvaod
хођиота Kal хрпиатоу xpvoóc.
XLI
XLI (D. 76, M. 66el) Plutarch, De E apud Delphous 392C
[[90<'Нраклћєтос reye, Tupds даратос̧ ёрі YEVEOLS, Kal àépoc
Davatos 06oTt yéveots.] ]
XXXIX Here again I give the text of Clement, as corrected from Eusebius. Many editors
introduce <yñ> as subject of the first clause.
XL The MS reading in Plutarch avrape(Berat порто, retained by Bywater and revived by
Bollack-Wismann, may be correct: but it offers no appreciable difference in sense.
47
XXXVII
The reversals of fire: first sea; but of sea half is earth, half lightning
storm.
XXXIX
Sea pours out «from earth? , and it measures up to the same amount
it was before becoming earth.
XL
All things are requital for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for
gold and gold for goods.
XLI
[[The death of fire is birth for air, and the death of air is birth for
water.] ]
XXXVIII reversals: tropé, reversal, flight in battle, rout; turning around, turning point,
esp. of the sun - solstice.
lightning storm: préstér, literally ‘burner’, a violent storm with destructive lightning.
XXXIX May be continuous with preceding fragment.
pours out: diacheetai, is spread apart, dissolves.
amount: /ogos: see on I; cf. the sense ‘measure’ in XXXV. Alternate version of the text:
*Earth dissolves as sea, and it measures up to the same logos as was there at first.'
XL requital: antamoibé, exchange; payment; punishment.
XLI From Plutarch: ‘As Heraclitus said...’
48
XLII
XLIIA (D. 100, M. 64) Plutarch, Quaestiones Platonicae 1007D—E
[[meptddous - cov 0 Мос ётіотаттс Ov Kal окопбс, др е Kat
BpaBeverv kai avadeckvvat Kal &vapatverv peTaBorac kal борас
at парта pépovot Kad’ 'HpakAecrov.] |
XLIIB (see M. p. 344) Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum 416A
[[éviavtos apxnv Èv афто Kal TEeAEUTHY ój00 TL TAVTWD cov
v épovoatv wpat yn è quier mepréxwv.| ]
XLIIIA
XLIIIA (D. А13, M. 65) Censorinus, De Die Natali 18.11
[[est praeterea annus... [sc. magnus] . . . cuius anni hiemps summa
est cataclysmos, . . . aestas autem ecpyrosis, quod est mundi
incendium. nam his alternis temporibus mundus tum ignescere tum
exaquescere videtur. hunc Aristarchus putavit esse annorum verten-
tium IICCCCLXXXIXII, . . . Heraclitus et Linus XDCCC.] ]
XLIIIB
XLIIIB (D. A5) Simplicius, in Physicorum 23, 38
[[Totet бё (sc. `Нраклхегтос) kai rá£v rtva Kal xpóvov copvauévov
тїс той кбоџоо рєтаВоћ№с kaTa тре eLuepuévnv àvaykqv.] ]
XLIV
XLIV (D. 94, M. 52) Plutarch, De Exilio 604A
"HAtoc ойх bmep(oerat uérpo * ei бё ur), "Ерилєс uiv Aikne
p
ёпікоурог é£evprjaovotv.
49
XLII
[ [The sun is overseer and sentinel of cycles, for determining the
changes and the seasons which bring all things to birth.] ]
XLIIIA
[ [There is a Great Year, whose winter is a great flood and whose
summer is a world conflagration. In these alternating periods the
world is now going up in flames, now turning to water. This cycle
consists of 10,800 years.] ]
XLIIIB
[ [There is a certain order and fixed time for the change of the cosmos
in accordance with some fated necessity.] ]
XLIV
The sun will not transgress his measures. If he does, the Furies,
ministers of Justice, will find him out.
XLII From Plutarch: ‘the seasons which bring all things to birth, as Heraclitus says’.
Reference to the sun may not belong to Heraclitus.
XLIIA From Censorinus: ‘Heraclitus and Linus «believed this cycle to consist of >
10,800 years.'
XLIHB From Simplicius: ‘Heraclitus posits a certain order...’
XLIV justice: diké, personified as daughter of Zeus in Hesiod's Works and Days: see on
LXIX.
50
XLV
XLV (D. 120, M. 62) Strabo 1.1.6
ойс Kal ёотёрес réppuara Ù ёрктос Kal, àvr(ov THS &PKTOV, ойрос
atdptov Ards.
XLVI
XLVI (D. 99, M. 60) Plutarch (2), Aqua an ignis utilior 957A
[['Hod&Xetroc uév obv ei uù HALos pnoiv Hv, ebppórn av fjv.] |
XLVII
XLVII (D. 3, M. 57) Aetius II.21 (ed. Diels, Doxographi Graeci
p. 352)
[['HodkAetroc edpos todos àvOpconetov (sc. pnatv тди ijXcov eivot.] ]
XLVIIIA
XLVIIIA (D. 6, M. 58a) Aristotle, Meteorologica II.2 355a13
[[ó 0с... кадатєр ò `Нракћє‹тбс qnot, véoc ёр’ huépn ёотір.] |
XLVIIIB
XLVIIIB (M. 58c) Plato, Republic VI, 498A
[[ot kai &zrópevot (sc. тїс tXooopíoc) perpàkia бита ... прос бё TO
ynpas ёктдс̧ бт ru»cov OACywv &ámoofévvuvrat TOAD MadAOV TOD
‘Hpakarectetov ACov, боо adds ойк E€aTTOVTAL.] ]
XLVI Another version (in Plutarch and Clement) has the words ¿veka rcv NAA ор Sorpuw
preceding the second clause.
51
XLV
The limits of Dawn and Evening is the Bear; and, opposite the Bear,
the Warder of luminous Zeus.
XLVI
[ [If there were no sun, it would be night.] ]
XLVII
[ [The sun is the size of a human foot.] ]
XLVIIIA
[[The sun is new every day.] ]
XLVIIIB
[ [The sun is extinguished in old age, but rekindled again.] ]
XLV limits: termata, goal, destination; turning mark for runners in a race; border, limits.
Dawn i.e. the east.
Evening i.e. the west.
The Bear: Ursa Major, the north?
Warder: ouros, watchman, warder; boundary, limit; the ouros opposite the Bear (arktos)
must be Arcturus (Arkt-ouros), whose risings and settings commonly served to mark the
seasons.
XLVI From Plutarch: ‘Heraclitus says...” Some versions add ‘as far as the other stars are
concerned'.
XLVII From Aetius: ‘Heraclitus says...’
XLVIIIA From Aristotle: ‘As Heraclitus says...”
XLVIHB From Plato: ‘Those who are kindled «in their interest for philosophy > as boys
.. аге, except for a few, extinguished in old age, much more so than the sun of Heraclitus,
since they are not rekindled.’
52
XLIX
XLIX (D. 126, M. 42) Tzetzes, Scholia ad Exegesin in Iliadem p. 126
» \ i \ t Lj A 5 t t
Ta yvxpà Oéperat, 9epuóv jUxerat, бурду abalvetat, kapqaAéov
vortfeTat.
L
L (D. 12, M. 40a) Arius Didymus fr. 39.2, ed. Diels, Doxographi
Graeci p. 471,4
TOTAMOLOL TOLOLP avTOLOLY éufjaCvovatv ётєра Kal ётєра VbaTa
ENLPpel.
LI
LI (D. 91, M. 40c3) Plutarch, De E apud Delphous 392B
[[rorouc yap ойк ёот>» EuBnvat ŝis TH афто Kad’ 'HoakXecrov*
обе IunTHs obotac 81 Paodat ката Ëv, AAA’ OEUTNTL Kal TAXEL
ретоаВоћтс окібрпог Kat nany ovvayet, раћћор 6é обе талар OVS’
VoTEpov ANN Apa OvvioTatat Kai AMOAELTEL, Kal TOGGELOL Kal
amecocv.] ]
LII
LII (D. 84a, M. 56A) Plotinus IV.8.1 (text below)
LIH
LIII (D. 84b, M. 56B) Plotinus (reference above)
[[ò èv yàp 'HodkXecroc . . . enw .. . weTaBaddAov avaTaveTat Kal
каџатбс ёоті Tots ойто uoxOeiv Kal &pxXedVat, eikateu &Ocokev.] ]
58
XLIX
Cold warms up, warm cools off, moist parches, dry dampens.
L
As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow
upon them.
LI
[[One cannot step twice into the same river, nor can one grasp any
mortal substance in a stable condition, but it scatters and again
gathers; it forms and dissolves, and approaches and departs.] ]
LII
[ [It rests by changing.] ]
LIII
[[It is weariness to toil at the same tasks and be always beginning.] |
L Forthe context, see note to CXIII.
LI From Plutarch: ‘According to Heraclitus...’
LII From Plotinus: ‘Heraclitus left us to guess what he means when he said...’
LII From Plotinus (continuing LH): ‘and when he said . . . ’. Alternate rendering: ‘It is a
weariness to labor for the same masters and be ruled by them' (Burnet).
54
LIV
LIV (D. 41, M. 85) Diogenes Laertius IX.1
èv rò ооду, ér(ora0 Dat yvwuny ӧкт їкоВєриђоо: ravra ёга
парто.
ІУ
LV (D. 78, M. 90) Origen, Contra Celsum VI. 12
Tj9oc yap àvOpconetcov ойк Exec "yvcouac, Oetov è Exet.
LVI
LVI (D. 82—3, M. 92b) [Plato] , Hippias Major 289A—B
[[тд rob 'HpakAetrov єй &xet, coc ёра TLOHKWP Ò KAAALOTOS
aloxpos avd puomwv yévet cupBadreELv. . . . Ñ ob Kal ‘Hpdkdettos афто
TOUTO A€YEL, OV OÙ Ena, OTe àvÓpcomcov Ò GOPwTaTOS трд Deóv
TLINKOS PavetTat Kal opin Kat KANNEL Kal тос HAAOLS т&огр;] ]
LVII
LVII (D. 79, M. 92a) Origen, Contra Celsum VI.12
айр vimus 1коооє TPOS Satwovos ÖKWONEP NATS прдс àvópoOc.
LVIII
ІУШ (D. 70, M. 92d) Iamblichus, De Anima, in Stobaeus П.1.16
[['Ho&kXecros тоб оу àOUpuora vevóutkev elvat ra йидротіра
боѓёаоџота.] ]
LIV The form xn (as in CVI, D. 117) is a natural emendation for the impossible ó7én in
the MSS. The plausible readings for xvgepvijoo« are (1) &ковєррпоє and (2) kvgepv&rau but
neither seems an obvious correction.
55
LIV
The wise is one, knowing the plan by which it steers all things
through all.
LV
Human nature has no set purpose, but the divine has.
LVI
[[The most beautiful of apes is ugly in comparison with the race of
man; the wisest of men seems an ape in comparison to a god.] |
LVII
A man is found foolish by a god, as a child by a man.
LVIII
[[Human opinions are toys for children.] ]
LIV wise: sophon: see on XXVII.
plan: gnómé, insight, recognition; thought, opinion, judgment; plan, proposal. Alternate
reading: ‘The wise is one thing, namely, to know [lit. master the insight] how all things are
steered through all.'
LV nature: éthos, character, customary disposition.
set purpose: gnomai: see preceding note.
LVI From pseudo-Plato, Hippias Major: ‘What Heraclitus says is right, that...’
LVIII From Iamblichus: ‘Heraclitus believed that ...’
56
LIX
LIX (D. 104, M. 101) Proclus in Alcibiades I, p. 117 Westerink
tis yap abtaov vdos ў фри; бђису обоо Te(Oovrat Kat
бгбаскаћо xpetcovrat ot Xco ойк є150тєс ӧті ot TOAXOL KaKol’, № уо 66
eyadot.
LX
LX (D. 87, M. 109) Plutarch, De Audiendis Poetis 28D
Baak ёр9ротос̧ ёті парті AOYw ptet ёптођо®ос.
LXI
LXI (D. 97, M. 22) Plutarch, An Seni Respublica gerenda sit 787C
курєс Kal Badfovotv dv àv ut) YLVWOKWOL.
LXII
LXII (D. 39, M. 100) Diogenes Laertius 1.88
ёр Приђр) Blac &yévero ò Tevtapew, ой TAE WY №уүос̧ Ñ тоу AAV.
LXIII
LXIII (D. 49, M. 98) Theodorus Prodromus, Epistulae 1 (Migne
p. 1240A)
eic цдрог, éav &рьотос Ñ.
LIX With most editors I accept Diels’ conjecture rei Dovrai for &rovrot (Clement) or
hniówv тє (MSS of Proclus).
LX With Bollack-Wismann, I follow the word order of what seems the more accurate
citation. The last two words are inverted in most editions.
LXHI With Bollack-Wismann, I give the text as found in Theodorus and Symmachus. D.
and M. combine this with a variant (in Galen and elsewhere) that includes tuoi.
57
LIX
What wit or understanding do they have? They believe the poets of
the people and take the mob as their teacher, not knowing that ‘the
many are worthless', good men are few.
LX
A fool loves to get excited on any account.
LXI
Dogs bark at those they do not recognize.
LXII
In Priene lived Bias son of Teutames, who is of more account than the
rest.
LXIII
One man is ten thousand, if he is the best.
LIX wit: phrén, mind, thought, intelligence, cognate with phronésis and phronein: see on
III and IV.
understanding: noos: see on XVIII. The quotation is from Bias, the sage mentioned in
LXII.
LX loves i.e. tends (cf. X).
account: logos: see on I. Alternate rendering: ‘A stupid man tends to get excited at any
report’, i.e. at whatever he hears.
LXII Priene: city near Ephesus.
Bias: sixth-century statesman and sage, often credited with saying ‘most men are worth-
less’ cited in LIX.
account: logos: see on I; here primarily ‘esteem, reputation’ with a play on Bias’ ‘saying’.
LXIII Alternate text: ‘One man is ten thousand for me.’
58
LXIV
LXIV (D. 121, M. 105) Strabo XIV.25 with Diogenes Laertius IX.2
à£.ov 'Egeototc m60v àna'y£ao at т&о Kal TOTS àvr)fouc THY
TÓAÀLV катоћ№тєїр, otruvec "Epuóó6copov àv6pa écovrcov óvrjLorov
é£éflaAov partes: uécov unóé eis óvricoroc Coro: et бе uN, HAA
T€ Kat uer ФМА.
LXV
LXV (D. 44, M. 103) Diogenes Laertius IX.2
puaàxeo2ac хр? TOV Sjyov ётер той vópov [тёр тоб *y.vouévov] ӧкос̧
bmép reíxeoc.
LXVI
LXVI (D. 38, M. 104) Clement, Stromateis V.115.2
биос Kat BovrAn пєідєодос évóc.
LXVII
LXVII (D. 110—11, M. 71 and M. 44) Stobaeus, III.1.176—7
àvOpcorrouc yiveodat ӧкдоа OcNovacv ойк ApELVOV. vobooc LyLEtnv
ёто(тоєу NOV Kal ауа би, ALMOS kópov, kapuorToc &AVATAVOLV.
LXV The bracketed words probably represent a mechanical error in copying. I see no
reason to change kws фтёр to ókcoamep with most editors.
59
LXIV
What the Ephesians deserve is to be hanged to the last man, every
one of them, and leave the city to the boys, since they drove out their
best man, Hermodorus, saying ‘Let no one be the best among us; if
he is, let him be so elsewhere and among others.’
LXV
The people must fight for the law as for their city wall.
LXVI
It is law also to obey the counsel of one.
LXVII
It is not better for human beings to get all they want. It is disease
that makes health sweet and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest.
LXIV Негтойогиѕ: apparently a contemporary, otherwise unknown. A late legend (per-
haps based on this text) made him go to Rome as co-author of the Twelve Tables, the first
codification of Roman law.
best: onéiston, most useful, beneficial.
LXV Cf. XXX.
LXVI counsel: boule, will, intention, plan; advice, counsel; the city council, ruling body
in some states.
of one: henos, with usual ambiguity: ‘one man’ or ‘one principle’.
LXVII Allusion to a proverbial line: ‘the sweetest thing is to get what you desire’.
60
LXVIII
LXVIII (D. 102, M. 91) Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem ed.
H. Erbse, I (1969), p. 445, on Iliad IV.4 (7 Porphyry, Quaestiones
Homericae, p. 69 Shrader)
[[Хтєр kai 'HpakXeuroc Aéyet, coc TO pèr #єср Kara парта Kal
&ya9à Kat Sikara, &vOÓpcrror бе à èv &6LKa DrELAnpaav à бё
ôikata.] ]
LXIX
LXIX (D. 23, M. 45) Clement, Stromateis IV.9.7
Atkns дроџра ойк àv Tjóeoav et тафта uN ўр.
LXX
LXX (D. 61, M. 35) Hippolytus, Refutatio ІХ.10.5
9aAac0a 08 0р кадаротатор Kal шаротатор · LXOUOL MEV TOTLMOV
Kal OWTHpPLOV, &vOpconocc бё &mrorov Kat фћедргор.
LXXI
LXXI (D. 9, M. 37) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X.5, 117626
[[Kadamep 'HpakXevróc pnow üvovc ођррат’ àv &XéaOot uàAXov Ñ
xpvoóv.] |
LXVIII M. omits koi &yo9á (after кало m&vro) as unworthy of Heraclitus. But we are
probably dealing with a paraphrase, not a quotation.
61
LXVIII
[[For god all things are fair and good and just, but men have taken
some things as unjust, others as just.] ]
LXIX
If it were not for these things, they would not have known the name
of Justice.
LXX
The sea is the purest and foulest water: for fish drinkable and life-
sustaining; for men undrinkable and deadly.
LXXI
[ [Asses prefer garbage to gold.] |
LXVIII From scholia to Iliad IV.4: ‘As Heraclitus said...’
LXIX these things: probably = wrongdoing and punishment.
Justice: diké, judgment, sentence; trial, lawsuit; justice; just punishment, penalty; per-
sonified in Hesiod: see XLIV.
LXXI From Aristotle: ‘As Heraclitus says...’
62
LXXII
LXXIIA (D. 13, M. 36a!) Clement, Stromateis 1.2.2
ùes BopBdpw ij6ovrat uaXXov ў Kadapa Dort.
LXXIIB (D. 37, M. 36c!) Columella VIII.4.4
[[si modo credimus Ephesio Heraclito qui ait sues caeno, cohortales
aves pulvere vel cinere lavari.] ]
LXXIII
LXXIII (D. 58, M. 46) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.10.3
ot larpoi réuvovrec katovrec [mávr1 Baoavi$ovrec какос TOUS
appworobvrTas] ExatTia@vrat unóév' tiov шодди Aap Pavey [Tapa
TOV XPPWOTOVVT WY] TabTa Epyafopuevor Trà wyada kal тас̧ vóoovct.
LXXIV
LXXIV (D. 59, M. 32) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.10.4
"yvaq o» 660€ ebOeto kal око.
LXXV
LXXV (D. 8, M. 27d! = 28c!) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics УШ.1,
1155b4)
[[Kat ‘Нракћєгтос̧ «sc. то > тд àvr(£ovv avupépov Kal ёк тоор
StapEepovTwv KadALOTNHV àpuovíiav Kal парта кат €ptv yiveodat.] |
LXXIII I follow the text of Kirk. M. reads rabr&à tpyagduevor [Tà &yo9à] Kal at рбоон,
following an emendation of Wilamowitz.
LXXIV I follow M., but omit the words uia ёоті kai ñh abr which he assigns to Heraclitus.
D. reads yoayetw for ура рор.
LXXII
[[Swine delight in mire more than clean water; chickens bathe in
dust.] ]
LXXIII
Doctors who cut and burn and torture their patients in every way
complain that they do not receive the reward they deserve.
LXXIV
The path of the carding wheels is straight and crooked.
LXXV
[ [The counter-thrust brings together, and from tones at variance
comes perfect attunement, and all things come to pass through
conflict.] ]
LXXII From Clement and Columella (combined): ‘Heraclitus says . . . '
LXXIII А disputed text. For variants see the commentary.
63
LXXV From Aristotle: ‘Heraclitus says...’ The text paraphrases LXXXII, and perhaps
also LXXVIII.
64
LXXVI
LXXVI (D. 11, M. 80) [Aristotle] , De Mundo 6, 401a10
NAV épmerÓv TANYT VEMETAL.
LXXVII
LXXVII (D. 125, M. 31) Theophrastus, De Vertigine 9
[[Kadamep 'HpakXetróc qnot, Kat 6 кокеси биотато: «un»
KLvoUpevoc.] ]
LXXVIII
LXXVIII (D. 51, M. 27) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.9.2
ob EuPLAGLY OKWS 6Lo«pepóuevov EWUTG OpONOYEEL* TAALYTPOTOS
appovin ókcomep тбёор Kai №рпс̧.
LXXIX
LXXIX (D. 48, M. 39) Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Buds
TQ THEW дуоро Bios, Epyov ёё даратос̧.
LXXX
LXXX (D. 54, M. 9) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.9.5
aPLOVLN àqavrc рарєрӣс kpeürrov.
LXXVI 7Anyi (preserved by Stobaeus) is the usual correction for тўр үйр in the MSS of
Aristotle.
LXXVIII With D. I give the unaltered text of Hippolytus. M., following Zeller and others,
substitutes ovpyéperat for óuoXo'yéec, most implausibly. The inevitable Homeric corruption
nadtvrovos for maAivrpon os appears once in Plutarch (out of three citations), much more
often in modern editions.
65
LXXVI
All beasts are driven by blows.
LXXVII
[ [Even the potion separates unless it is stirred.] ]
LXXVIII
They do not comprehend how a thing agrees at variance with itself;
it is an attunement turning back on itself, like that of the bow and
the lyre.
LXXIX
The name of the bow is life; its work is death.
LXXX
The hidden attunement is better than the obvious one.
LXXVI beasts: herpeton, creeping thing, used by gods in Homer to refer to mankind.
driven: nemetai, pastured.
blows: plégé, probably an allusion to the stroke of Zeus, the thunderbolt by which he
rules.
LXXVII From Theophrastus: ‘As Heraclitus says...’
potion: kykedn, mixture of wine, barley, and cheese, described in Лаа XI.639f.
LXXVIII agrees: homologeei: see on XXXVI.
at variance: diapheromenon, differs from; quarrels with: cf. V.
attunement: harmonie, fitting together; joint, fastening; agreement, compact; musical
tuning, scale, tune.
turning back: palintropos, an enigmatic variant on the usual palintonos, stretching back,
epithet of the bow in Homer; probably alludes to solstice (tropa:) and reversals of fire in
XXXVIII.
LXXIX Old word for ‘bow’ (biós) differs from word ‘life’ (bios) only by the accent, not
written in Heraclitus' time.
LXXX attunement: harmonie: see on LXXVIII.
better: kreittón, more powerful, superior; better, preferable.
66
LXXXI
LXXXIA (D. A22, M. 28c?) Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics VII.1,
1235225
[[Kat 'HoakXecroc ётітіи тор тоўоврть ‘ws Epis ёк тє Dewr коі
avd pwonwy androtTo’: ob yap àv elvat xppoviav ur) dvros ó£éoc Kai
Bapéos, ob6€ rà fia &vev ó7jAeoc kat &ppevoc Evavtiwv бутор.) |
LXXXIB (M. 28c5) Scholia A to Iliad XVIII.107
[['HodkXetroc Thv rcov дутои púow кат’ €puv ovveoTavat voula
uéugperou "Ounpov, avyxvotv kóopou 6okcov abrOv eUxeo9at.] |
LXXXII
LXXXII (D. 80, M. 28) Origen, Contra Celsum VI.28
eióé« vat» хрт| TOV тд\єцор EdvTa EuvÓv Kal ёѓкти ёру Kai yivópeva
порта кат’ €ptv Kal Xpewpeva (?).
LXXXIII
LXXXIII (D. 53, M. 29) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.9.4
TONELOS тертодр MEV TaTHP EOTL, партои 66 Вао:ћєус, Kal тойс MEV
9є00< ёбєгёє тойс 66 aVOPWrous, TOUS uév dovAOUS ётотоє TOUS 5
EdevdEpous.
LXXXIV
LXXXIV (D. 27, M. 74) Clement, Stromateis IV.144.3
àvOpcorouc évei ёподоудитос̧ боса ойк éAXTOvTaL ойбё 6okéovotv.
LXXXII Most editors emend xpewpeva to xpecov, following an improbable suggestion of
Diels.
67
LXXXI
[[Homer was wrong when he said ‘Would that Conflict might vanish
from among gods and men!’ (Шаа XVIII.107). For there would be
no attunement without high and low notes nor any animals without
male and female, both of which are opposites.] ]
LXXXII
One must realize that war is shared and Conflict is Justice, and that
all things come to pass (and are ordained?) in accordance with
conflict.
LXXXIII
War is father of all and king of all; and some he has shown as gods,
others men; some he has made slaves, others free.
LXXXIV
What awaits men at death they do not expect or even imagine.
LXXXI From Aristotle: ‘Heraclitus reproaches the poet for saying...’
Conflict: eris, strife, personified as a divine power in Hesiod.
LXXXH shared: xynon: see on III, and cf. XXX.
Conflict sec preceding note.
ordained: text uncertain.
LXXXIV expect: elpontai, hope, anticipate: cf. VII.
imagine: dokeousi, believe, decide; suppose, conjecture, guess: cf. IV.
68
LXXXV
LXXXV (D. 28A, M. 20) Clement, Stromateis V.9.8
бокёорте Ò 6okuucoraTOG YLVWOKEL, ролаооєг.
LXXXVI
LXXXVI (D. 86, M. 12) Plutarch, Coriolanus 38 = Clement,
Stromateis V.88.4
àmLOTÉQ Stapvyyavet ut) yu.ioookea9at.
LXXXVII
LXXXVII (D. 28B, M. 19) Clement, Stromateis V.9.3
Aükn KaTa yerat Pevdav rékrovoc Kal рарторос.
LXXXVIII
LXXXVIII (D. 96, M. 76) Strabo XVI.26 = Plutarch, Quaestiones
Conviviales IV.4.3, etc.
vékvec kompio EKBANTOTEPOL.
LXXXIX
LXXXIX (D. 21, M. 49) Clement, Stromateis 11.21.1
SavaTos EoTLV ӧкбоа &yepÓévrec ópéouev, ӧкбоа бе є0бортєс̧ Unvoc.
LXXXVI With Bollack-Wismann, I keep &rtor(n in the nominative, the nearly unanimous
reading of the MSS both in Plutarch and in Clement. Since Bywater most editors have pre-
ferred the dative form &morin, which is not transmitted.
LXXXIX M. substitutes ўпор for Unvoc, needlessly.
69
LXXXV
The great man is eminent in imagining things, and on this he hangs
his reputation for knowing it all.
LXXXVI
Incredibility escapes recognition.
LXXXVII
Justice will catch up with those who invent lies and those who swear
to them.
LXXXVIII
Corpses should be thrown out quicker than dung.
LXXXIX
Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep.
LXXXV More literally: ‘What the most esteemed man recognizes and defends is «mere
imaginings."
eminent: dokimotatos, fully approved, most highly esteemed, with a play on dokein,
seem, guess.
imagining things: dokeonta, what seems to be so, what is believed: see on dokeousi in
LXXXIV.
knowing it all: ginoskei, recognize: see note on IV. This text is perhaps continued by
LXXXVII.
LXXXVI Incredibility: apistie, untrustworthiness, unreliability; incredulity, lack of con-
fidence. For other construals see commentary.
LXXXVII Perhaps a continuation of LXXXV.
70
XC
XC (D. 26, M. 48) Clement, Stromateis IV.141.2
avdpwos èv ebypdvy paos AnTETAL EavT@ [à109avcv] &roofeaóeic
OwWers, Sav бё anretat reOvecoroc єў бор [àmoofeo0eic буе |,
éypmyopcos &mrerat eb6ovroc.
XCI
XCI (D. 75, M. 1h?) Marcus Aurelius VI.42
[[700< Kadevdovras ofa 0 'HoákAMecroc ёрүдтас eivat Xéyet Kal
Ovvepyous тоу èv тор кбор yuwopgévo.] ]
XCII
XCII (D. 62, M. 47) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.10.6
&àOavarot пто, IvnTol ёдаратог, {утес TOV éketvcov доротор,
TOv бё éketvox (Kov TEDVEWTES.
XCIII
XCIII (D. 88, M. 41) Pseudo(?)-Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium
106E
тофто T’ Evt (?) Sav Kal TEdVNKOS Kal тд ёүртүүорд< Kal тд Kadeddov
Kal véov Kal ynpatdv: табє yap ueromeoóvro EKELVA EOTL kàketva
палу џєтотєодита тарта.
XCIV
XCIV (D. 52, M. 93) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.9.4
ALAW Tals €OTL Talfwv, Te00€Ucov* MALOS Вао:№іт.
ХСШ The form т’ ¿vı must be wrong and should probably be bracketed. Some editors
exclude maAcv, needlessly.
71
XC
A man strikes a light for himself in the night, when his sight is
quenched. Living, he touches the dead in his sleep; waking, he
touches the sleeper.
XCI
[[Men asleep are laborers and co-workers in what takes place in the
world.] ]
XCII
Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, living the others’ death, dead
in the others’ life.
XCIII
The same . . . : living and dead, and the waking and the sleeping, and
young and old. For these transposed are those, and those transposed
again are these.
XCIV
Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs
to the child.
XC strikes: haptetai, touches, is in contact with; sets fire to, kindles, as in XXXVIL.
quenched: aposbestheis, extinguished, put out, also of fire in XXXVII; lit. ‘the man is
extinguished in regard to his vision’.
touches: haptetat again, twice.
XCI From Marcus Aurelius: ‘Heraclitus says, I think...’
XCIII Beginning of text is corrupt. Some eds. read ‘The same is there . . . ° or ‘The same
is present inus..."
XCIV Lifetime: aion, vitality, life; lifetime, duration, time; cognate with aiei, forever.
moving pieces: pesseuón, playing pessoi, a board game perhaps involving dice, like back-
gammon and modern Greek tavli,
72
XCV
XCVA (D. A19, M. 108b!) Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum 415E
[ [тт TptakovTa то‹ойок THY yeveav Kad’ `Нрак\єгтор, Ev co xpóvoo
yevvcovra парєҳєг TOV EE ойтой 'yeyevvnuévov 0 yevvnoas.] |
XCVB (D. A19, M. 108b?) Censorinus, De Die Natali 17.2
[[Hoc enim tempus [sc. annos triginta] genean vocari Heraclitus auctor
est, quia orbis aetatis in eo sit spatio; orbem autem vocat aetatis dum
natura ab sementi humana ad sementim revertitur.] ]
XCVI
XCVI (D. 25, M. 97) Clement, Stromateis IV.49.2
pdpat weSoves uéfovac potpas Ao^yxavovot.
XCVII
XCVII (D. 29, M. 95) Clement, Stromateis V.59.4
atpedvrat ËV àvri ATAVTWY oi APLOTOL, KAEOS àévaov Ovnrcv- ot бё
TOAAOL KEKOPNVTat Okcoomep KTHVER.
XCVIII
XCVIII (D. 20, M. 99) Ibid. III.14.1
yevóuevot {сии é9éXovot uópovs т’ €xew [u&AXov бё àvomavUeo9at] ·
Kal natas KaTarelmovat uópouc yeveadat.
78
XCV
[[A generation is thirty years, in which time the progenitor has
engendered one who generates. The cycle of life lies in this interval,
when nature returns from human seed-time to seed-time.] ]
XCVI
Greater deaths are allotted greater destinies.
XCVII
The best choose one thing in exchange for all, everflowing fame
among mortals; but most men have sated themselves like cattle.
XCVIII
Once born they want to live and have their portions; and they leave
children behind born to become their dooms.
XCV From Plutarch and Censorinus, combined: ‘According to Heraclitus...’
from seed-time to seed-time i.e. from a man's birth to the birth of his son.
XCVI deaths: moros, portion, lot; fate, doom; violent death.
destinies: moira, part, share, fraction; allotment, territory; social status; destiny, Fate.
XCVII sated: kekoréntat, cognate with koros, satiety in LXVII, CXX, and CXXIII.
XCVIII portions: moroi: see on XCVI; here ‘share of life’ with play on ‘doom, death’.
born to become: genesthai, to become; last word in sentence echoes first word,
genomenoi, having been born
dooms: moroi again: see above.
74
XCIX
XCIX (D. 108, M. 84) Porphyry, Quaestiones Homericae, on Iliad
XIV.200
[[Evvov yap apxn Kal тёрес Emi kÜkXov meptoepetac KaTa TOV
'HpakAecrov.] ]
C
C (D. 24, M. 96) Clement, Stromateis IV.16.1
apnivarous eot TLUWOL Kat avOpwTor.
CI
CI (D. 115, M. 112) Stobaeus III.1.180a
Wuxns ori Adyos ёаотди aUEcov.
CII
CII (D. 36, M. 66) Clement, Stromateis VI.17.2
yuxiotv davatos Viwp yevéodat, Varı бё VavaTos түй» yevéoOac-
ёк үйс̧ бе twp ylverat, e£ 0ботос бё Wuyxn.
сш
СШ (D. 60, M. 33) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.10.4
060€ AVW като ша Kat от.
CIV
CIV (D. 43, M. 102) Diogenes Laertius IX.2
UBpiv хой oBevvUvac uaXXov À TUpkKa iv.
75
XCIX
[ [The beginning and the end are shared in the circumference of a
circle.] ]
C
Gods and men honor those who fall in battle.
CI
To the soul belongs a report that increases itself.
CII
For souls it is death to become water, for water it is death to become
earth; out of earth water arises, out of water soul.
CIII
The way up and down is one and the same.
CIV
One must quench violence quicker than a blazing fire.
XCIX From Porphyry: ‘According to Heraclitus...”
end: peras, limit, end-point; cf. limits (peirata) of soul in XXXIV.
shared: xynon: see on III.
C whe fall in battle: aréiphatoi, lit. who are slain by Ares the war god.
CI report: logos: see on I, and sense of measure in XXXIX; for thought cf. XXXV.
CH souls: psychai, see on XXXV.
become: genesthai, with play on ‘birth’, as in XCVIII; cf. XLI: ‘the death of air is birth
for water'.
76
CV
CV (D. 85, M. 70) Plutarch, Cortolanus 22.2; cf. Aristotle,
Eudemian Ethics II.7, 1223b22, etc.
9uuc paxeoVat xoXemóv- 0 yap av VENN, WUXIS cvetrat.
CVI
CVI (D. 117, M. 69) Stobaeus Ш.5.7
буйр ókórav pedvadH, &yerat отд TaLd5Os арбоо офаћ\биєрос̧, ойк
erata örn baiver, byprv THY PuxHy Exwv.
CVII
СУП (D. 95, M. 1102?) Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales 644F
[[auadinv yap &puecvov, cds nou 'HpakXecros, kpúntew: Epyov бё
Ev àvéoet Kat Tap’ otvov.] |
СУШ
СУШ (D. 77, М. 664!) Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum 10
(Numenius fr. 30 des Places = fr. 35 Theodinga)
[ [99 €» kat 'HpakXetrov уулоо pavat тёр ur) 9àvorov byptot
yevéa9aa.] |
CIX
CIX (D. 118, M. 68) Stobaeus III.5.8
abyn Enon уох, COPWTATN kat &ploTn.
СУШ M. and others follow D. in reading Й instead of uñ.
CIX With D. and Bollack-Wismann, I keep the full text of Stobaeus, confirmed by a dozen
ancient citations. Most modern editors have been tempted to change obyrj to «Un, and then
bracket npn as a gloss.
77
СУ
It is hard to fight against passion; for whatever it wants it buys at the
expense of soul.
CVI
A man when drunk is led by a beardless boy, stumbling, not perceiv-
ing where he is going, having his soul moist.
CVII
[[It is better to hide one’s folly; but that is difficult in one’s cups
and at ease. | |
СУШ
[[It is delight, not death, for souls to become moist.] ]
CIX
A gleam of light is the dry soul, wisest and best.
CV passion: thymos, heart, spirit, mind; passion, desire; manly spirit, courage; anger, rage:
the last sense is understood here by ancient authors.
soul i.e. life-spirit or vitality: see on XXXV.
СУП From Plutarch: ‘As Heraclitus says...’
CVIII From Porphyry: ‘Hence Heraclitus says...’
CIX gleam of light: auge, brilliance, ray of sunlight, flare of fire, sheen of metal.
78
CX
CX (D. 63, M. 73) Hippolytus, Refutatio 1X.10.6
+évda 5’ Edvret &raviorao дос Kat qUXoKoc yiveoðat ёүєрті EVTV
Kal VEKQCOV.
CXI
CXI (D. 98, M. 72) Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunae 943E
[[(ras V vxàc) тод THE тоҳоуотс ava 9ошаоєос rTpéqeoot: Kal
Karas ‘Hpakrertos einer Ort at Woxal óoucvrat Kad’ "Acónv.] ]
CXII
CXII (D. 7, M. 78) Aristotle, De Sensu 5, 443a21
[[8oket 5’ &viouc h KatVvudne àvadSuu(ootc eivat борт], обоа когу)
йс TE Kal áépoc . . . 80 Kai `Нракћєгтос ойтос єїрїүкєр, coc єї
тарта TH бита KaTVOS "yévouro, pives àv 6wyvotev.] |
CXIII
CXIIIA (D. A15) Aristotle, De Anima 1.2, 405225 (cf. 404b9)
[[(офто. бё Хёүоро THY уохдр Tas &pxac . . . ) Kal `Ноакћєгтос ёё
THY &pxTv eivat qot yuxirv, єїпєр THY àvaguutaotr, ёё He TAA
OVMLOTNOLV* Kal àOcouaTcoroTÓV T€ Kal péov &el.] |
CXIIIB (D. 12, M. 40) Arius Didymus fr. 39.2, ed. Diels,
Doxographi Graeci 471
[[KAeavóms . . . pnoiv Ore Zrjvoov тти yuxnv AéyevatoOnrucv
дуа дошао koaOaTep 'HpakXecroc* BovAduEvos yap Eupavioat
(sc. ‘HpakaAetTos) O7t at PoxXal &àvaOuutcouevat voepal àei yivovTat,
ELKQGEV AVTAS TOLS TOTALOLS NEYWV OUTWS · ‘тотароїоі тоор
obroLotv ёрВо (оро ётєра Kat ётєра VbaTa ётіррєг’. Kal Yvxal бё
отд TOV bypcv avadvpta@vrat.| |
CXIIIB For voepai, M. and other editors read veapat.
79
CX
(...) to rise up (2) and become wakeful watchers of living men and
corpses.
CXI
[[Souls smell things in Hades.] ]
CXII
[ [If all things turned to smoke, the nostrils would sort them out.] ]
CXIII
[[The soul is an exhalation that perceives; it is different from the
body, and always flowing.] ]
CX Beginning of the text is corrupt.
watchers: phylakes, guardians; cf. golden race in Hesiod (Works and Days 122f.) who
after death became spirits and guardians of men.
CXI From Plutarch: ‘Heraclitus was right to say...’
СХП From Aristotle: ‘Heraclitus said...’
CXIII From Cleanthes (combined with Aristotle, D. A15): ‘Zeno says the soul is a per-
cipient exhalation, like Heraclitus. For Heraclitus, wanting to show that souls as they are
exhaled are continually becoming intelligent, likened them to rivers when he said . . .
(7 fr. L). But souls too steam up out of moisture."
80
CXIV
CXIV (D. 119, M. 94) Stobaeus IV.40.23 = Plutarch, Quaestiones
Platonicae 999E, etc.
NIOS ардрото Satuwv.
CXV
CXV (D. 14, M. 87) Clement, Protrepticus 22.2
TH ошё Oueva KAT’ aVEPUMOVS PVGTNHPLA AVLEPWOTL uvobvTat.
CXVI
CXVI (D. 15, M. 50) Clement, Protrepticus 34.5
єї pn Acovdow портр érocvoüvro Kai Uuveov боро atdocoracy,
avatSéotata elpyaorat: juTos бе 'А(ӧтс kai Atdvucos drew
po vovrat Kal Anvaifovaty.
CXVII
CXVII (D. 5, M. 86) Theosophia 68 (Erbse, Fragmente griechischen
Theosophien, p. 184) plus Origen, Contra Celsum VII.62
Kadatpovrat 6' &AXXcoc atpart Lou vOpevot, ókotov et TLS eic MNAOV
tubas TAQ атои (осто · patveddat 8° àv бокёо ei TLS ши àvO poomcov
ETLYPAOALTO ойто TOLEOVTA. Kal TOLS ayaApact ёё TOVTÉOLOLV
eVxovTat, OKotov ei TLS TOLc ÓÓpoLOL AEOXNVEVOLTO, OU TL YLVWOKWY
Seovs 006’ Howac olTLves etat.
CXV In what precedes, the words vuxrimdrots, udyous, Bak XOLS, Arvauc, uoro «c may also
belong to Heraclitus, as Diels thought.
81
CXIV
Man's character is his fate.
CXV
The mysteries current among men initiate them into impiety.
CXVI
If it were not Dionysus for whom they march in procession and
chant the hymn to the phallus, their action would be most shameless.
But Hades and Dionysus are the same, him for whom they rave and
celebrate Lenaia.
CXVII
They are purified in vain with blood, those polluted with blood, as if
someone who stepped in mud should try to wash himself with mud.
Anyone who noticed him doing this would think he was mad. And
they pray to these images as if they were chatting with houses, not
recognizing what gods or even heroes are like.
CXIV character: éthos: see on LV.
fate: daimon, divinity; fortune for good or evil.
CXV Preceded by ‘For whom is Heraclitus prophesying? For nightwandering sorcerers
(magoi), Bacchoi, Lenai, mystic initiates’; the list may be part of the quotation.
CXVI phallus: aidoia, pudenda, genitals.
Hades: god of the dead.
Lenaia: festival of Dionysus, probably characterized by frenzied dancing or ritual mad-
ness. The phallic hymn and procession belong to a different festival of Dionysus.
CXVII with blood: ritual purification from blood guilt involved use of pig’s blood.
82
CXVIII
CXVIII (D. 32, M. 84) Clement, Stromateis V.115.1
ëv тд оорду uobvov №ёуєо дох ойк EDEAEL Kal EDEAEL Znvóc бошо.
CXIX
CXIX (D. 64, M. 79) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.10.7
табє парта OLaKifEL kepavvóc.
CXX
CXX (D. 65, M. 79 and 55) Hippolytus, Refutatio ІХ.10.7
[[kepavvóv тд nip XAéycv тд al covcov. Néyer бё Kal qpóvcuov тобто
eivat TÒ пр kal тїс Óvoukrjaecoe тоу ÜXcov аїтіор · kadet бё adTO
'"'xpnouooUvmr Kal kOpov': xonauooUrm бё ÈOTLV Ù 6.akóoumote кат’
adTov, f; dé éknUpcoote kópoc.] ]
CXXI
CXXI (D. 66, M. 82) Ibid.
, A л › \ - 1 1
порта TO пор ENEAVOV KPLVEL Kal KaTa] erat.
CXXII
CXXII (D. 16, M. 81) Clement, Paedagogus 1.99.5
TO UN дорду TOTE пос àV TLS Aa ог;
CXIX Reading тёбе for rà 8é with Boeder and others.
CXX I give the text of Hippolytus, as in D. M. has transposed the text according to a
suggestion of Frankel.
83
CXVIII
The wise is one alone, unwilling and willing to be spoken of by the
name of Zeus.
CXIX
The thunderbolt pilots all things.
CXX
(Fire is?) need and satiety.
CXXI
Fire coming on will discern and catch up with all things.
CXXII
How will one hide from that which never sets?
CXVIII The wise is one: hen to sophon: identical with initial phrase of LIV; and cf. on
XXVII.
of Zeus: Zénos with play on zen, to live.
CXIX thunderbolt: the weapon of Zeus.
all things: tade panta, lit. ‘these things, all of them’.
CXX satiety: koros asin LXVII and CXXIII; cf. cognate kekoréntai in XCVII. Cited by
Hippolytus in his commentary on CXIX: ‘By thunderbolt he means the eternal fire. And...
he calls it Need and Satiety.’
CXXI discern: krinei, separate, select, judge.
catch up with: katalépsetai, catch, grasp, seize, as in LXXXVII.
CXXII hide from: lathoi, escape the notice of.
84
CXXIII
CXXIII (D. 67, M. 77) Hippolytus, Refutatio IX.10.8
6 9eóc HUÉPN ebypdrn, xeuicov 9époc, TOAEMOS ei or)vn, kópoc Acuóc.
&XXotobrat 66 бкооотєр бкбте> ovut yh Svwpaoty óvouáterat Kad’
бор ékaoTov.
CXXIV
CXXIV (D. 10, M. 25) [Aristotle] , De Mundo 5, 396b20
ovda yes: òra Kal ойу Oda, ovupepóuevov Stayepduevov, ovvadov
Sta бор, ёк тертоәр Ev Kal ёЁ évóc парта.
CXXV
CXXV (D. 124, M. 107) Theophrastus, Metaphysica 15 (p. 16, Ross
and Fobes)
[[od puo eii kexvuévcov ò KdAALOTOS, pnoiv 'HoakXecroc, [ò]
кбоџос.]
CXXIII This is the text of Hippolytus, without his inserted comment (тёрартѓо &navra*
obros ò voUc). Most editors add a word, generally <mdp>, as subject for ovumi yñ.
CXXIV I follow M. and most recent editors in reading ovAAdy es where D. has сорау cec.
CXXV I give the text of Diels, accepted by Ross and Fobes. M. has кєҳриєрор (for
Kexvuévcov) and he adds «c» before ynoiv.
85
CXXIII
The god: day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety
and hunger. It alters, as when mingled with perfumes, it gets named
according to the pleasure of each one.
CXXIV
Graspings: wholes and not wholes, convergent divergent, consonant
dissonant, from all things one and from one thing all.
CXXV
[ [The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings.] |
CXXIII pleasure: hédoné, pleasure; flavor, taste.
of each one: hekastou, ambiguous between 'each person' and 'each perfume'. Some
editors introduce ‘fire’ (after ‘as’) as subject of last two clauses.
CXXIV — Graspings: syllapsis, seizing, arresting, catching hold of; combination, compre-
hending, summing up; biological conception.
convergent: sympheromenon, moving towards; agreeing with, being on friendly terms.
divergent: diapheromenon, moving apart; differing from; quarrelling with: cf. LXXVIII.
consonant: synaidon, accompany in song, sing in agreement with.
dissonant: diaidon, contend against in singing, compete in singing contest; sing apart.
CXXV from Theophrastus: ‘Heraclitus says...”
The fairest order in the world: kosmos, world order, with play on older sense: adorn-
ment, ornament.
On reading Heraclitus
It has been noted that every age and philosophical perspective, from
Cratylus to the Neoplatonists and the fathers of the Church, projected
its own meaning and its own preoccupations onto the text of
Heraclitus. This is a familiar enough phenomenon in the history of
ideas: every generation and every school has its own reading of Plato,
Kant, or Marx. But Heraclitus is an acute case. By the ambivalent and
enigmatic quality of his utterance he lends himself as few authors do
to the free play of interpretation. So it has often seemed that the task
of modern scholarship was simply to undo the work of history: to
strip away the various levels of exegesis and distortion deposited by
the centuries, in order to recover the original meaning of the pre-
served text.
Such is indeed the task of conscientious philology, and I have tried
wherever possible to construe Heraclitus’ meaning within the context
of his own time and place. But in principle the effort to recover the
authentic Heraclitus, that is, to attain a uniquely correct interpretation,
is an enterprise that can never succeed. We are not only confronted
with the warning of the onion: if we peel off all the layers of inter-
pretation there may be nothing left, or nothing of any interest. There
is the more fundamental problem that we, good classical scholars that
we are, are also historical beings with a certain perspective, who can
only see what is visible from where we happen to be standing. For
Diels and Burnet, the standpoint was that of the late nineteenth cen-
tury. For Reinhardt, Snell, and Frankel it was situated a generation
or two later; and they could also perceive, and criticize, the stand-
point of the nineteenth century. For those of us who write in the
latter half of the twentieth century the intellectual atmosphere has
already changed, been enlarged; and what we can see includes not
only new knowledge from our own time but also new perspectives on
the older interpretations. By induction we may be sure that the next
generation, even the next perceptive reader of Heraclitus, will be able
to see something new and different.
88 On reading Heraclitus
Thus our historical sense, our sense for the relativity of human
understanding from age to age and the changing conditions for what
one can meaningfully perceive or communicate, obliges us to give up
the idea of some timeless vantage point from which a uniquely true
picture of Heraclitus might be obtained. Any lucid approach will be
explicitly hermeneutical; which is only to say that we must provide
the framework for making sense of Heraclitus, and we had best be
aware of what we are doing. Heraclitus’ discourse was addressed to
other listeners, in another time and place. (And even in the case of
the original audience, he was not very optimistic about the chances
of being understood.) He will speak to us only insofar as we are able
to articulate his meaning in our own terms. The text is there, asa
kind of object-language. But it is we who must provide the herme-
neutical metalanguage within which today's interpretation can be
formulated. The text will not bring forth its own contemporary com-
mentary. And Heraclitus himself is not here either to confirm or cor-
rect what we take him to mean.
None of this implies that interpretation is a game with no rules,
which anyone can play and in which no mistakes are possible. On the
contrary, I shall argue that ancient and modern interpretations of
Heraclitus have been profoundly mistaken, in various ways, because
they have not provided an appropriate conceptual framework for
eliciting the meaning of the text. But beyond the minimum con-
ditions of philological accuracy, there is no higher tribunal to which
one can appeal for a judgment between alternative frameworks of
interpretation. The hermeneutical circle is constituted by the fact
that it is only within the presuppositions of a meaningful framework
that we can make sense of a given text; and it is only by its applic-
ability to the text in question that we can justify the choice of a par-
ticular framework. From this circle there is no escape. If we do not
deliberately construct or select our own interpretative framework,
we become unconscious and hence uncritical prisoners of whatever
hermeneutical assumptions happen to be ‘in the air’.
I shall attempt, then, to articulate the principles that govern the
interpretation to be offered here. As my title suggests, I want to
emphasize the double significance of Heraclitus' achievement: as a
literary artist and as a philosophical thinker of the first rank. I will
not defend my view of his philosophical importance; in taking him
seriously as a thinker I simply follow the ancient tradition from Plato
to Plotinus (not to mention the modern tradition from Hegel to
Nietzsche and Heidegger). But his literary artistry, which has been
On reading Heraclitus 89
briefly described in section 2 of the General Introduction, calls for
more extended discussion, since its contribution to the meaning of
his doctrine has been generally neglected. The intimate connection
between the linguistic form and the intellectual content of his dis-
course will be the primary object of my commentary.
In order to elucidate this relationship between literary structure
and philosophic thought I make use of three assumptions, two of
which are fundamental for my interpretation, while the third is per-
haps only a device of expository convenience. The fundamental prin-
ciples are what I call the linguistic density of the individual fragments
and the resonance between them. The third, more optional principle
is a meaningful arrangement for the fragments, as in the ordering
imposed here. As was noted earlier, this third principle is itself two-
fold: (1) I assume that the original order was a meaningful one, and
(2) I assume that the order I have chosen is true to Heraclitus' own
meaning. Some reasons in favor of the first of these two assumptions
were given in the General Introduction. The second assumption can-
not be defended by any argument: it is justified only by its utility, to
the extent that it makes Heraclitus easier to read and interpret. But
this principle of arrangement is not only conjectural and controversial.
It also turns out to be dispensable, in the sense that anyone who
accepts the other two principles (linguistic density and resonance)
may reach the same over-all interpretation of Heraclitus without
attaching any particular importance to the order in which the frag-
ments are to be read.
By linguistic density I mean the phenomenon by which a multi-
plicity of ideas are expressed in a single word or phrase. By resonance
I mean a relationship between fragments by which a single verbal
theme or image is echoed from one text to another in such a way that
the meaning of each is enriched when they are understood together.
These two principles are formally complementary: resonance is one
factor making for the density of any particular text; and conversely,
it is because of the density of the text that resonance is possible and
meaningful. This complementarity can be more precisely expressed
in terms of ‘sign’ and ‘signified’, if by sign we mean the individual
occurrence of a word or phrase in a particular text, and by signified
we mean an idea, image, or verbal theme that may appear in different
texts. Then density is a one-many relation between sign and signified;
while resonance is a many-one relation between different texts and a
single image or theme.*8
Resonance appears in many different forms. The most explicit
90 On reading Heraclitus
case is a repetition of the very same word, such as the ten occurrences
of logos scattered over nine different fragments. With these we con-
nect occurrences of the same theme in cognate words: in the verb
legesthai ‘to speak’, and also in ‘speaking together’ or ‘agreeing’ (xyn
... legontas in XXX, D. 114; homologeein in XXXVI, D. 50, and
LXXVIII, D. 51). Similarly, we find six distinct occurrences of the
term ‘shared’ or ‘common’ (xynon). Another case is the recurrence
of a single image or theme which may or may not be expressed by
the very same words: sleeping and waking, the bow (LXXVIII and
LXXIX) and the helmsman (LIV and CXIX). Less formal resonance
occurs between words of similar or related meanings, such as War
(polemos) and Conflict (eris); or the various expressions for seeking,
finding out, hiding, being hard to find. This notion of non-formal
resonance can be extended to the various terms for knowledge, under-
standing, wisdom, and intelligence found throughout the fragments
(gnósis, noos, sophia, phronésis, etc.). At the limit, these diverse
phenomena of resonance, taken together with explicit statements of
identity and connection (such as *war is shared and conflict is justice")
will serve to link together ali the major themes of Heraclitus’ dis-
course into a single network of connected thoughts, thus articulating
his general claim that ‘all things are one’. It is because of this semantic
role of resonance that the order in which the fragments are read need
not, after all, be decisive for their meaning. The stylistic achievement
of Heraclitus is to have contrived a non-linear expression of conceptual
structure, a hidden fitting-together that is more powerful than the
linear order I have composed. Thus the complex notion of wisdom,
one of his central themes, can be understood by considering the four
texts in which the neuter singular form sophon ‘wise’ occurs (XXVII,
XXXVI, LIV, and CXVIII), without regard to the order in which they
are arranged.
But of course they will in any case be arranged in some order. And
whatever that order may be, the phenomenon of resonance (in this
case, between the four occurrences of sophon) will give rise to a linear
effect which is like what Anne Lebeck called ‘prolepsis’, and which
she illustrated in detail for Aeschylus’ Oresteia, where the linear order
is independently known.
The form which repetition or recurrence takes in the Oresteia is
that of proleptic introduction and gradual development. The word
*prolepsis' here denotes a brief initial statement of several major
themes en bloc . . . In its early occurrences the image is elliptical
and enigmatic. It is a griphos or riddle whose solution is strung out
On reading Heraclitus 91
over the course of the individual drama or the entire trilogy. Sig-
nificance increases with repetition; the image gains in clarity as the
action moves to a climax. Prolepsis and gradual development of
recurrent imagery, along with the corollary, movement from enig-
matic utterance to clear statement, from riddle to solution, domi-
nate the structure of the Oresteia.*9
My arrangement of the fragments is inspired by the assumption that
a similar movement dominates the structure of Heraclitus! own
exposition. Thus I have placed first the most enigmatic reference to
*what is wise' (XXVII), and have reserved for the climax his more
solemn and decisive announcement of ‘the wise one alone’ (CXVIII).
But however they are arranged, the four fragments on the theme of
sophon will reinforce one another: the earlier occurrences will pre-
pare the reader for the later ones, which in turn will cast some light
back on what precedes. Thus the effect of prolepsis in some form, as
a consequence of resonance over a linear text, is independent of any
particular arrangement of the fragments.
The other principle, of linguistic density within a given text, is
essentially the phenomenon of meaningful ambiguity: the use of lexi-
cal and syntactic indeterminacy as a device for saying several things
at once. It will often be convenient to speak of deliberate or inten-
tional ambiguity. I think these expressions are harmless and justified,
as long as it is clearly understood that there is no external biographical
evidence for imputing such intentions to Heraclitus. For these
expressions simply reflect the fact that we can construe an ambiguity
in the text as meaningful only if we perceive it as a sign of the author's
intention to communicate to us some complex thought.
Linguistic density in this sense bears a certain formal resemblance
to the deliberate ambiguity of the Delphic oracle, to which Heraclitus
himself alludes (XXXIII, D. 93). But the semantic structure of the
two cases is fundamentally different. In an oracle like 'If Croesus
makes war on Cyrus, he will destroy a great kingdom', the ambiguity
(namely, whose kingdom?) is certainly calculated. But after the event
there can be no doubt as to what would have been the ‘correct’
interpretation. The task of understanding an oracle consists in reject-
ing various possibilities and selecting the one appropriate message.
With meaningful ambiguity in poetic discourse, however, there can
be no single interpretation that is alone correct: the meaning is essen-
tially multiple and complex. In the process of interpreting a text we
may consider and discard some senses as inappropriate. But we will
be left with an irreducible residue of at least two partially significant
92 On reading Heraclitus
interpretations, two distinct statements to be understood as ‘intended’
by the author, if the ambiguity itself is artistically meaningful. That is
to say, to the stylistic device of polysemy or multivocity on the part
of the author must correspond a principle of hermeneutical gener-
osity on the part of the reader and commentator.
This principle, which has been taken for granted in literary criti-
cism for some time,9? has unfortunately been neglected in the more
austere proceedings of classical scholarship. As a result, a good deal
of scholarly effort has been devoted to eliminating multiplicity of
meaning and thus impoverishing the semantic content of the text, by
defending a single construal to the exclusion of others. In the case of
Heraclitus as in that of Aeschylus, the interpreter's task is to preserve
the original richness of significance by admitting a plurality of
alternative senses — some obvious, others recondite, some superficial,
others profound. Such discourse presupposes an art of reading which
classical scholars seem to have lost, though they are beginning to re-
discover it in recent studies of Aeschylus.5!
Borrowing a term from contemporary linguistics I shall say that a
given text admits several different ‘readings’, where the readings differ
from one another by imposing alternative syntactical combinations
on the text or by taking the same word in different ѕепѕеѕ.52 I shall
first describe my procedure for analyzing linguistic density in general
terms, and then illustrate it by an application to the first sentence of
Heraclitus! book.
I count as the primary reading for a text the interpretation that
seems most natural, most likely to recommend itself ‘on first reading’.
One or more secondary readings may then be required, either to
resolve problems raised by the primary reading (as in the case of our
first example below), to take account of equivocal words or construc-
tions, to bring out a connection of language or imagery between this
text and other fragments. (In the latter case the phenomena of den-
sity and resonance will coincide.) In establishing the primary reading
it will be important to know not only the linguistic expectations
created by earlier literature but also the normal usage of the words in
Ionic prose, their ‘ordinary’ meaning for Heraclitus’ original audience.
To this end our best guide will be the usage of Herodotus, where the
evidence is abundant, of relatively early date, and beautifully analyzed
in Powell's Lexicon to Herodotus. The only substantial body of sur-
viving prose that is older than Herodotus is precisely our material
from Heraclitus.5?
Turning now to the first sentence of the book, we seek a primary
On reading Heraclitus 93
reading for the first three words: tou logou toude ‘this logos here’.
On the basis of evidence to be presented in the Preliminary Remark
on this fragment, we can be sure that an original reader of the book
would have understood this phrase as a conventional self-reference,
an introduction to the work itself: *this discourse which I am present-
ing, and which you are about to read'. But the next two words,
eontos aiei ‘being forever’, confront us with a dilemma that has
plagued readers since Aristotle and has been the subject of endless
dispute among modern commentators — a dispute which, I suggest,
can only be resolved if we are prepared to regard ambiguity not as a
blemish to be eliminated but as a meaningful stylistic device to be
accepted and understood.
What Aristotle noticed, in one of his rare comments on another
philosopher's style, was that the word atei ‘always, forever’ in this
opening sentence can be construed either with the words that precede
(‘this logos is forever’) or with those that follow (‘men always fail to
comprehend’). Aristotle offers no opinion on the construction
beyond the appropriate remark that such ambiguity makes Heraclitus
hard to read (Rhet. Ш.5, 1407b11ff., = DK 22.A4). But modern
scholars have felt obliged to take sides, either in favor of the former
construction (which was long predominant, and has been defended
recently by Gigon, Verdenius, Frankel, Guthrie, and West), or in
favor of the latter (which was urged by Reinhardt, Snell, Kirk,
Marcovich, and Bollack-Wismann, among others). What this division
of opinion shows is that, as Aristotle observed, there is good reason
to take the adverb both ways.
The primary, most natural construal will take аге with what pre-
cedes, for two reasons: (1) this construction will become visible first,
because what precedes is presented first, and (2) the verb ‘is’ (eontos)
is generally used as copula, with some other term as predicate or
complement. In Greek as in English, a phrase like ‘although this logos
is...’ leads us to expect another word or phrase before the end of
the clause — before we ‘punctuate’ (diastixai) as Aristotle put it. (And
so in the parallel clause in III, D. 2: ‘although the logos is. . . shared’.
The difference is that in Greek, but not normally in English, these
expectations may be mistaken and the verb ‘is’ turn out itself to con-
stitute the predicate. This possibility will be exploited in our second
reading.
On first reading, however, I punctuate after atei and construe: ‘this
logos is forever’ (or ‘is always’). Now ‘being forever’, eontos atei, is a
standard Homeric phrase for the immortal gods who are ‘everlasting’
94 On reading Heraclitus
or who ‘live forever'.5* When the primary senses of logos and ‘is for-
ever’ are combined, they give: ‘this discourse is forever alive, is
immortal’ — a reading on the face of it so strange that it obliges us to
go deeper. But although this first interpretation is puzzling, it is not
necessarily mistaken. On the contrary, its correctness at a deeper level
is confirmed by a phenomenon of resonance: the parallel term
aeizoon 'everliving' is applied to fire in XXXVII (D. 30), together
with the phrase én ae: ‘it was forever’, in an emphatic (and syntactic-
ally ambiguous) triple occurrence of the verb ‘to be’. Thus the logos
of Heraclitus, though not itself definitely identified as an eternal
principle, is presented from the very beginning in such a way as to
provide a suggestion of everlasting life.
But this idea is at best a hyponoza here, a mysterious hint of a
thought not fully expressed. We want something to be said about the
logos that is appropriate to a stretch of discourse; and in this con-
nection the Homeric formula for immortality will not do. Thus our
primary reading collapses under its own weight.
A second reading will take account of the fact that we can punc-
tuate before aiei and construe the adverb with what follows: ‘men
always fail to comprehend’, This leaves the verb ‘is’ (eontos) without
any predicate or complement in the initial clause: ‘although this logos
is’. We can make sense of that by appealing to what I have called the
veridical use of the verb, where esti or eon (Attic on) means ‘is true,
is so’: ho eon logos will be ‘the true report’, ‘an account which states
the facts’.55 The sentence now becomes ‘Although this logos is true,
men are forever incapable of understanding it.’
In translating the sentence I have tried to suggest both readings.
But no rendering can do justice to the fact that a reader who wishes
to avoid an arbitrary decision will be left in genuine suspense between
the more natural reading of the first clause ‘this logos is forever’,
which has a proper literary ring to it but leaves us wondering just
what that could mean, and the reading ‘this logos is true’, which is
stylistically more recherché but clear, even banal in its content. When
both readings have a good case to be made for them, it is important
to leave open the possibility that the difficulty of deciding between
them is itself the intended effect. And once we have understood
Heraclitus’ thought as a whole, we see why this initial perplexity is
significant. For the logos of Heraclitus is not merely his statement: it
is the eternal structure of the world as it manifests itself in discourse.
This will be hinted at in the next words (‘men fail to comprehend,
even before they have heard what I have to say’), further indicated
On reading Heraclitus 95
by the diverse usage of logos throughout the fragments, and most
strikingly in the contrast between ‘listening to me’ and ‘listening to
the logos’ in XXXVI (D. 50).
Thus we have two plausible and instructive readings of the first
sentence, corresponding to alternative construals of the adverb azez.56
And it is the primary, more natural reading (‘this logos is forever’)
that is from the point of view of content the deeper and more para-
doxical. The reading which is secondary or artificial in stylistic terms
(‘this logos is true’) is more unsurprising, even banal in terms of con-
tent. So the relation between the surface meaning and the hyponoia
or ‘deeper sense’ is itself unstable and complex.
The result is a prose style which fully justifies Heraclitus’ reputation
as ‘the obscure’ (ho skoteinos). The effect of an initial encounter is
preserved for us in the anecdote of Socrates’ response, when Euripides
asked him what he thought of the book: ‘What I understand is excel-
lent, and I think the rest is also. But it takes a Delian diver to get to
the bottom of it’ (D.L. II.22). An eloquent epigram preserved by
Diogenes warns the reader not to peruse the book too rapidly: ‘It is
a hard road, filled with darkness and gloom; but if an initiate leads
you on the way, it becomes brighter than the radiance of the sun.'57
I make no claims to reach such dazzling clarity here. But I do
believe (with Diels and others) that the longer one reflects upon
these fragments, the clearer becomes the unity, complexity, and pro-
fundity of the thought they convey.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that my procedure of recog-
nizing two or more distinct ‘readings’ is only a hermeneutical device
for clarifying the semantic density of the text. Such devices are legiti-
mate and necessary, and they require no apology. But they need not
blind us to the fact that there is no natural unit for counting the
*meanings' of a given text. One might reasonably claim that a// of
Heraclitus! fragments have only one single meaning, which is in fact
the full semantic structure of his thought as a whole, of which any
given phrase is but an incomplete fragment. Our piecemeal ‘readings’
of particular phrases or sentences are best regarded as workmanlike
tools for apprehending and reconstructing this global meaning, as a
kind of ladder or crutch to be abandoned once the goal of under-
standing has been achieved.
Commentary on the fragments
I
Preliminary remark on fragment I
Fragment I is the longest quotation from Heraclitus, and probably
the longest piece of surviving Greek prose before the Histories of
Herodotus, which it antedates by fifty years. It is in turn some fifty
years younger than the earliest known prose work, the little book of
Anaximander, from which we have one quotation (DK 12.B 1, cited
above, p. 18). As this quotation from Anaximander and the nearly
contemporary citations from Pherecydes show, and as the fragments
of Heraclitus and the long narrative of Herodotus confirm, Ionic prose
came into being as a highly developed literary form; for it could from
the start draw upon the rich resources of two centuries of written
epic and lyric poetry, beginning with the Шаа in the eighth century
— and of course the Лаа in turn could draw upon a long tradition of
oral poetry. Thus the high literary level of early Greek prose is not in
itself surprising. What is surprising is the extraordinarily dense and
personal style of the quotations from Heraclitus.
As we can see from other early samples, Greek prose was at first
employed primarily for the publication of Ionian historié: for pre-
senting the results of systematic ‘inquiry’ or ‘research’ on a variety
of subjects from astronomy to biology, including historical research
in connection with the description of lands and peoples (as in the
travel book of Hecataeus, a Milesian contemporary of Heraclitus).
The old Ionic term historié soon became fixed in its narrow appli-
cation to ‘history’ in our sense, because it was this type of investi-
gation that first gave birth to major works of prose literature: the
Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. We can form some picture
of the earlier Ionian books from what remains of Hecataeus, Anaxa-
goras and Diogenes of Apollonia, as well as from the older Hippocratic
treatises.
From such evidence we know that when Heraclitus begins his
Commentary: I (D. 1) 97
proem with a reference to his own logos he is following a literary tra-
dition well established among early prose authors. The oldest surviving
parallel is the preamble to a work of Hecataeus (the Historiai or
Genealogiat) which began with these words: ‘Hecataeus of Miletus
says as follows. I write these things as they seem to me to be true.
For the reports (/ogoz) of the Greeks are, in my judgment, many and
ridiculous.'58 The fifth-century treatise of Ion of Chios begins: ‘The
starting point of my discourse (logos): all things are three, and
nothing more or less than these three' (DK 36.B 1). Other examples
show that such treatises were regularly introduced by a reference to
the logos or discourse as such.5?
But if this self-reference is a traditional feature in the proem, what
is not traditional at all is the peculiar emphasis on the term /ogos and
the syntactic ambiguities by which it is surrounded (above, p. 93).
The stylistic difficulties here suggest that if Heraclitus’ logos is from
one point of view the usual Ionian prose ‘report’, it is also something
quite different. Heraclitus presumably chose to write in prose because
that was the new scientific language of his day and the traditional
idiom of aphoristic wisdom. But whereas the general tendency of
Ionian prose is towards directness and clarity of expression, the dis-
tinctive trait of Heraclitus’ own style is a more than Delphic delight
in paradox, enigma and equivocation. In this respect, the little book
of Heraclitus will have been a very atypical representative of the new
genre. A reader who began by expecting a straightforward report of
scientific research or speculation would be brought up short by the
grammatical dilemma confronting him in the first sentence.
For convenience of reference, I number the three sentences of the
first fragment and consider them one by one.
I(D.1).1 Although this account (Jogos) holds forever, men ever fail to compre-
hend, both before hearing it and once they have heard (or ‘when they hear it for
the first time’).
Both Aristotle and Sextus tell us this passage came at the beginning
of the book. As we have seen, the initial ambiguity in the syntax of
aiei ‘forever’ hints at the deeper ambivalence in the status of
Heraclitus’ logos: it is both his discourse and something more: some-
thing universal (all things occur in agreement with it), even eternal
and divine (eon atei), precisely in virtue of the fact that it is *com-
mon’ or ‘shared’ by all (xynos in III, D. 2).
98 Commentary: I (D. 1)
This first sentence sounds the twin themes of hearing and compre-
hending that will recur with increasing significance throughout the
fragments (II, D. 34; XIV, D. 55; XV, D. 101a; XVI, D. 107; XVII,
D. 19; XXVII, D. 108; XXXVI, D. 50, etc.). The complaint that his
auditors are unable to comprehend is a natural one on the part of an
author who has chosen the language of enigma and equivocation.
What is more puzzling is the insistence that men prove uncompre-
hending not only ‘once they have heard my discourse’ but even
before. How can they be expected to understand it in advance? This
will make sense only if Heraclitus’ logos represents a truth that has
been there all along: if, like Fire, it always was and is and will be.
Thus the /ogos here cannot be just ‘what Heraclitus says’, not
merely the words he utters or even the meaning of what he has to
say, if meaning is understood subjectively as what the speaker has in
mind or his intentions in speaking. The /ogos can be his ‘meaning’
only in the objective sense: the structure which his words intend or
point at, which is the structure of the world itself (and not the inten-
sional structure of his thought about the world). Only such an
objective structure can be ‘forever’, available for comprehension
before any words are uttered. Which is not to say that we can trans-
late logos by ‘structure’ or by ‘the objective content of my discourse’.
The tension between word and content is essential here, for without
it we do not have the instructive paradox of men who are expected
to understand a logos they have not heard.
I2 Although all things come to pass in accordance with this account (logos),
men are like the untried when they try such words and works as I set forth, dis-
tinguishing each according to its nature (pAysis) and telling how it is.
The second sentence begins with a clause in the genitive case that
echoes not only the syntax but also the vocabulary of the beginning.
The verb ginesthai ‘become, come to pass’, which first expressed
men’s lack of comprehension, is here applied to all the things that
there are (gínomenón panton) and that men fail to comprehend. The
genitival construction, which first depended upon axynetoz ‘unable
to comprehend’, is now connected with apezroz ‘lacking in experience’.
The formal parallels between these two sentences suggest that
Heraclitus is developing a single point. In both cases the announce-
ment of the /ogos and its universal truth (in the genitival clause) is
contrasted with the incompetent response of mankind (in the prin-
cipal clause). The tension between the two aspects of logos — the
Commentary: I (D. 1) 99
actual words of Heraclitus and their everlasting content — is stretched
still further here, where the /ogos as universal law is juxtaposed with
Heraclitus’ reference to his own exposition, in the emphatic first per-
son (hokot6n ego diégeumai ‘such as I set forth’).
‘They are like the untried’, ‘they resemble men without experience’
is a surprising phrase; for it suggests that in fact men do have the
experience in question. And well they might: since it is experience of
things that occur according to the ‘logos’, and these are all things, no
one can be without such experience. But it is difficult for men to
grasp this truth, even when Heraclitus announces it to them directly.
They can make nothing of his words (epea), nor of the facts (erga)
which he points out, although he ‘tells it like it is’ and puts each
thing in its place, ‘according to its physis’.
The word for ‘facts’, erga (‘works’, ‘deeds’) has epic overtones: it
may refer to heroic exploits and also to more humble labor, as in
Hesiod's Works and Days. The term physis, on the other hand, for
the genuine nature or structure of a thing, is the watchword of the
new natural philosophy that radiates from Miletus. By the use of this
characteristic word, which recurs in X (D. 123) and XXXII (D. 112),
as by his use of historie (‘inquiry’) and kosmos (in the sense of
*world order"), Heraclitus expressly claims affinity with the new
scientific tradition, and thus offers his own truth as a supplement or
as a rival to that of the natural philosophers.
1.3 But other men are oblivious of what they do awake, just as they are forget-
ful of what they do asleep.
What is striking here is not so much the self-assurance (not to say
arrogance) of the thinker who regards ‘other men’ as sleepwalkers,
but the almost pathetic epistemic isolation of a man trying to convey
the vision of an obvious and immediate truth to men who stagger
past, unable to notice what they are doing all day long, as if it were a
dream they cannot grasp or hold on to. The image of sleep (which will
elsewhere provide a kind of link between life and death) serves here
to give a more drastic expression to the idea of cognitive alienation.
Coming as it does at the very beginning, this paradoxical conception
of the human condition as a state of deepest ignorance in the face of
an immediately accessible truth serves to define the basic framework
within which the specific doctrines must be understood. In particular,
it warns us against an over-hasty interpretation of his relationship to
Ionian science. The historié of men like Anaximander or Hecataeus,
100 Commentary: II-III (D. 34, D. 2)
or even Pythagoras and Xenophanes, represents new and technical
knowledge, the product of special research, whether derived by
watching the stars or by visiting the Thracians and Persians. Such
historié is certainly not the apprehension of a universal truth of
immediate experience, as accessible to men as *what they do awake'.
Hence the attitude of Heraclitus to such science will turn out to be
profoundly ambivalent. His own philosophic vision is inspired by the
new scientific study of the world, but it is directed towards a truth
of an entirely different kind.
Perhaps one may compare Heraclitus' sense of epistemic isolation,
and this ambivalent relationship to contemporary scientific knowl-
edge, with the position of Bishop Berkeley in regard to Newtonian
physics and optics. Berkeley's sensory idealism depends historically
and psychologically upon the new science of his day, and upon care-
ful studies in the geometry of vision. But his philosophical position
as such does not logically depend upon any technical knowledge
whatsoever. On the contrary, it involves a complete reinterpretation
of what all scientific knowledge is about. Berkeley's teaching too
involves a truth (from his point of view) closer than hands and feet,
which ought to be obvious to every person, but which is in fact
devilishly difficult to communicate even to a benevolent reader.
The most crucial disanalogy here — apart from the contrast
between the state of the sciences in 500 B.C. and in A.D. 1700 — is
the fact that Berkeley's doctrine is concerned with issues that are
purely theoretical or cognitive: with the nature of knowledge and
what is known. For Heraclitus, questions of cognition are inseparable
from questions of action and intention, questions of life and death.
The blindness he denounces is that of men who 'do not know what
they are doing’. It is the life of mankind that is the subject of his
discourse, not the theory of knowledge and perception.
With this proviso, we can say that his proem does characterize
human life in epistemic terms, in terms of a well-nigh universal failure
to make sense of one's experience. His initial concern is less with the
structure of reality than with the extreme difficulty of grasping this
structure.
II—III
II (D. 34) Not comprehending, they hear like the deaf. The saying bears wit-
ness to them: absent while present.
Commentary: II—IIl (D. 34, D. 2) 101
Ш (D. 2) Although the account (logos) is shared, most men live as though their
thinking (phronésis) were a private possession.
Since II and III contain elaborate echoes of the proem in diction and
in thought, it is natural to suppose they followed on it rather closely.
(In the case of III Sextus tells us as much.) Three of the first four
words in П are formal repetitions from I: axynetoi, akousantes,
eotkast. The new element is the comparison to the deaf. The paradox
‘absent while present’ confirms the sense of epistemic isolation. There
seems to be an audience there, men listening, but no communication
is possible, nothing gets through. These pathetic listeners, who include
most men and most of Heraclitus’ illustrious predecessors, must be
somewhere else, ‘off on their own trip’.
III (D. 2) also opens with a phrase from the proem.9? But instead
of ‘forever’ the logos now has as its predicate xynos ‘common’,
‘shared’. In its first occurrence this key term is marked by stylistic
emphasis, where the mechanism of repetition leads us to expect aie,
the epithet of divinity.
On first reading, we understand the logos as ‘common’ because it
is shared by all things or events, which take place in accordance with
it (1.2). But common logos also means ‘common consent’, ‘common
cause’, as when several powers combine in an agreement or аШапсе.61
This is brought out in a later echo of ‘listening to the logos’, when
Heraclitus speaks of wisdom on the listeners’ part as ‘speaking in
agreement’, homologein (XXXVI, D. 50). The notion of ‘consensus’
or ‘agreement’ is only latent here; more unmistakable is the notion
of the ‘common’ as the public, what belongs to the community asa
whole, in contrast to what is private. Another overtone of xynos
logos will emerge in the word play of XXX (D. 114), where tó? xynói
pantón ‘what is common to all’ presents a phonetic echo of xyn nooi
legontes ‘speaking with understanding’. That ‘common’ (xynos) in M
may also suggest the word for understanding or intelligence (noos) is
made likely by the contrast here between the common logos and the
private phronésis which men have or claim.9? I translate phronésis as
‘thinking’ to preserve the resonance with the cognate verb phronein,
translated ‘think’ in IV and elsewhere. The term also means ‘intelli-
gence’, ‘good sense’, ‘wisdom’ in practical decisions. Hence the verb
zóousin here: it is a question of how men ‘live their lives’.
In sum, the logos is ‘common’ because it is (or expresses) a struc-
ture that characterizes all things, and is therefore a public possession
in principle available to all men, since it is ‘given’ in the immanent
102 Commentary: IV (D. 17)
structure of their shared ехрегіепсе.63 The logos is also shared as a
principle of agreement between diverse powers, of understanding
between speaker and hearer, of public unity and joint action among
the members of a political community. The /ogos is all these things
because the term signifies not only meaningful speech, but the exer-
cise of intelligence as such, the activity of nous or phronésis. The
deepest thought of xynos logos, more fully expressed in XXX, is that
what unites men is their rationality, itself the reflection of the under-
lying unity of all nature.
I assume that logos means not simply language but rational dis-
cussion, calculation, and choice: rationality as expressed in speech, in
thought, and in action. (All these ideas are connected with the classic
use of logos, logizesthai, epilegein, etc., e.g. in Herodotus.) This is
rationality as a phenomenal property manifested in intelligent behav-
ior, not Reason as some kind of theoretical entity posited ‘behind the
phenomena’ as cause of rational behavior. The conception of logos as
a self-subsistent power or principle is foreign to the usage of Heraclitus,
but essential in the Stoic conception of the divine Reason that rules
the universe. (See on V below.)®*
IV
IV (D. 17) Most men do not think (phroneousi) things in the way that they
encounter them, nor do they recognize what they experience, but believe their
own opinions.
The first two clauses of IV reformulate the theme of failure to under-
stand; the third introduces the topic of seeming knowledge or guess-
work (dokein). So far the cognitive condition of mankind has been
characterized negatively, as deafness, absence, lack of understanding.
The description in more positive terms begins with the comparison to
sleep and hence dreaming in 1.3, and with the suggestion in III that
error involves treating phronésis as if it were something private. (The
convergence of these two ideas, privacy and sleep, will come in VI.)
The last clause of IV points to a connection between this description
of error and an older, half-technical concept of ‘appearance’ or
‘opinion’, expressed by cognates of the verb dokein ‘to seem’.
Heraclitus’ own use of the concept of ‘opinion’ is discussed below,
on LXXXIV (D. 27)—LXXXV (D. 28A).
The notion of incomprehension is developed by a complex literary
device: each clause takes a traditional topos or commonplace of
Commentary: IV (D. 17) 103
Greek poetic wisdom and stands it on its head. The effect is to present
Heraclitus’ thesis not simply as a challenge to contemporary savants,
but as an implicit correction of the wisdom of Homer, Hesiod, and
Archilochus.
One of the most famous passages on ‘thinking’ in Homer is Odyssey
ХУШ.136: ‘The mind (noos) of men upon the earth is such as the
day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.' In context,
this means that the fortune and happiness of men is dependent upon
the decision of the gods; but the dependence is stated in terms of
men's understanding of their situation. (And this statement of
Odysseus finds its immediate application in the folly of the hearer,
Amphinomus, who fails to heed the warning of which these words
are part, and which would have saved his life.) Almost the same
phrase occurs, with roughly the same meaning, in a fragment of
Archilochus (68 Diehl): ‘The heart (thymos) of mortal men, Glaucos
son of Leptines, becomes such as the day which Zeus brings upon
them, and their thoughts (phroneusin) are such as the deeds (ergmata)
that they encounter (enkyredsin)’, that is, their thought is deter-
mined by their situation.65 The first clause of IV contains, in its two
verbs and its comparative structure (toiauta . . . hokoia ‘in the way
that’ or ‘such . . . as’) a clear echo of Archilochus’ own words. But
Heraclitus echoes Archilochus only to deny what the latter affirms.
Men’s thinking is not in conformity with the reality they encounter
— would that it were!
The second clause denies another familiar lesson: learning the hard
way, pathei mathos. Before becoming the theme of Aeschylus’
Oresteia, ‘knowledge through suffering’ was the standard character-
ization of the fool who learns too late. In Hesiod’s parable of the two
roads, one of Justice (Diké) and one of Crime (Hybris), the way of
Crime is said to be easier at the beginning but disastrous at the end:
‘and the fool recognizes this (egno) when he has suffered his punish-
ment (pathon), (Works and Days 218).66 Again, Heraclitus alludes to
Hesiod’s commonplace only to contradict it: experience, even suffer-
ing, teaches men nothing at all. They do not have the wit to recognize
(ginoskein) what is happening to them. The insights that men find in
the poetry of Homer, Hesiod, and Archilochus are nothing more than
‘believing their own opinions’: enough wisdom to satisfy their own
folly.
This is our first encounter with the verb gigndsko ‘to recognize,
perceive, know’, which occurs in Hesiod’s proverb as in Archilochus’
own claim to insight.67 Heraclitus has taken over this verb, with its
104 Commentary: V (D. 71—3) and VI (D. 89)
cognate nouns gnomeé and gnosis, as his own term for ‘cognition’ ina
privileged sense, for the insight which men lack and which his own
discourse attempts to communicate.
V
V(D.71—3) Marcus Aurelius: [Always bear in mind what Heraclitus said . . .
And bear in mind the man who forgets where the way leads, and that ‘they are
at odds with (diapherontai) that with which they most constantly associate' (the
logos which controls all things), and that what they meet with every day seems
strange to them, and that one should not act and speak like men asleep.]
(Here I render the fuller context in Marcus; in the translation I gave
only what might be a citation from Heraclitus.)
Although this text contains an echo of several fragments (notably
of IV), there is no clear trace of literal quotation and hence no basis
for detailed commentary. ‘They are at odds with that with which they
most constantly associate’ represents something Heraclitus might
have said, and the implicit word play on diapherontai is attested else-
where (CXXIV, D. 10). But Marcus Aurelius is citing from memory,
and since his memory is not very accurate there is no way to tell
whether he is preserving a genuine fragment or simply developing his
own recollection of IV.
In any case, the words in parenthesis, ‘the logos which controls the
universe’, represent (even in terminology: diotkein ta hola) the Stoic
rather than the Heraclitean conception of logos.
VI
VI (D. 89) Plutarch: [Heraclitus says that the world (kosmos) of the waking is
one and shared but that the sleeping turn aside each into his private world.]
Plutarch is paraphrasing, not quoting verbatim: he uses the ordinary
word koinos for ‘common’, where Heraclitus always has xynos (5
times in the extant fragments). The absence of any archaic overtones
in the sense of kosmos here also suggests a post-Platonic phrasing. In
general, the rhetoric of the passage is that of Plutarch, not
Heraclitus.$9 But I see no reason to doubt that Plutarch is rendering
Heraclitus' thought correctly.
Commentary: VII—X (D. 18, 22, 35, 123) 105
УП-Х
УП (D. 18) He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is
trackless and unexplored.
УШ (D. 22) Seekers of gold dig up much earth and find little.
IX (D. 35) Меп who love wisdom (philosopho: andres) must be good inquirers
(histores) into many things indeed.
X(D.123) Nature (physis) loves to hide.
I have grouped these four quotations on the basis of their common
imagery of searching, finding, being hard to find. Only in one case
(IX, D. 35) is there any doubt as to the authenticity of the wording.
If genuine, this would be the earliest occurrence of the term philoso-
phos in Greek. Since the word here has its etymological force (‘lover
of wisdom’ or ‘eager for learning new and clever things’), and is paired
with the term histores that suggests Ionian inquiry (cf. historie in
XXV, D. 129), I have ranked this as a quotation. (Clement is gener-
ally one of our best sources for literal citations.) If Heraclitus used
the term philosophos, as I suppose, he may have intended an allusion
to the other masters of wisdom, the seven sophoi or sages, two of
whom (Thales and Bias) are mentioned in the fragments. Thus philoso-
phoi andres admits a secondary reading: ‘men who want to become
sages’. Heraclitus himself makes a special use of the concept of to
sophon ‘what is wise’. It would be in character for him to introduce
the theme of wisdom in the compound form philo-sophos, as the
object of ardent desire.®9
As grouped here, these four quotations deal with the difficulty of
cognition from the side of the object. Whereas I—IV describe human
incomprehension as a kind of perverse blindness in regard to what is
staring us in the face, VII—X recognize that the truth, the character-
istic nature of things (physis), the prize of wisdom hunted by phil-
osophical goldseekers, is not simply there for the taking. Even if the
logos is common to all, so that the structure of reality is ‘given’ in
everyday experience, recognition comes hard. It requires the right
kind of openness on the part of the percipient — what Heraclitus calls
‘hope’ or ‘expectation’ (elpesthai in VII; compare LXXXIV, D. 27).
And it requires inquiry and reflection — digging up a lot of earth and
judging it with discretion. The ‘gnosis’ which Heraclitus has in mind
is rational knowledge, and it has to be gained by hard work; it is not
the miraculous revelation of a moment of grace.
106 Commentary: XI—XIII (D. 47, A23, 74)
XI—XIII
XI (D. 47) Let us not concur casually about the most important matters.
XII (D. A23) Polybius: [It would no longer be fitting to take poets and story-
tellers as witnesses for things unknown, as our ancestors did in most cases, citing
untrustworthy authorities on disputed points as Heraclitus says.]
XIII (D. 74) Marcus Aurelius: [We should not act and speak like ‘children of
our parents’, in other words, in the way that has been handed down to us.] 70
These three texts express a critical attitude towards traditional or
current practice and belief; they add little to the more authentic frag-
ments. I print XI as quotation rather than paraphrase only because it
occurs in a context (D.L. IX.71—3) with verbatim citations from
other authors.
XIV—XVII
XIV (D. 55) Whatever comes from sight, hearing, learning from experience:
this I prefer.
XV (D.101a) Polybius: [According to Heraclitus, eyes are surer witnesses
than ears.]
XVI (D. 107) Eyes and ears are poor witnesses for men if their souls (psycha:)
do not understand the language (literally, ‘if they have barbarian souls’).
XVII (D. 19) Not knowing how to listen, neither can they speak.
These four statements develop and clarify the thought of VII—X: the
usual sources of information are necessary but not sufficient for the
cognition that Heraclitus is trying to describe.
XIV seems to insist upon the fact that the truth is not so recondite
as it might seem, or as some will pretend: far from requiring any
special revelation or abstruse theory, what Heraclitus treasures is
something that can be grasped by sight, hearing, and ordinary experi-
ence of life (mathésis: compare mathontes in IV, D. 17). The prefer-
ence for eyes over ears has a proverbial ring (as in the Gyges story,
Herodotus I.8.2). It expresses not so much an epistemic ranking of
the senses as the reliance upon direct experience rather than upon
hearsay. This is basic both for Ionian historié (inquiry conceived as
finding out for oneself) and for Heraclitus’ own attack upon the tra-
ditional wisdom of the poets.
Commentary: XIV—XVII (D. 55, 101a, 107, 19) 107
But learning from experience involves more than keeping one's
eyes and ears open: in order for thinking (phronein) to become recog-
nition (gindskein) the soul of the observer must not be ‘barbarian’,
that is, it must know the relevant language. Heraclitus thus develops
the double aspect of logos indicated in the proem: spoken words, and
a universal pattern of experience. The world order speaks to men asa
kind of language they must learn to comprehend. Just as the meaning
of what is said is actually 'given' in the sounds which the foreigner
hears, but cannot understand, so the direct experience of the nature
of things will be like the babbling of an unknown tongue for the soul
that does not know how to listen.
This is apparently the first time in extant literature that the word
psyché ‘soul’ is used for the power of rational thought. (Contrast the
‘irrational’ psyche described as waking when the body sleeps, in the
Pindar fragment cited below, p. 127.) The new concept of the psyche
is expressed in terms of the power of articulate speech: rationality is
understood as the capacity to participate in the life of language,
‘knowing how to listen and how to speak’.
These intimate connections between speech, intelligence, and the
logos which is ‘common to all’ appear again in XXX (D. 114), as in
IIl (D. 2), and once more in XXXVI (D. 50).
XVIII—XIX
XVIII (D. 40) Much learning does not teach understanding (noos). For it
would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and also Xenophanes and Hecataeus.
XIX (D. 57) The teacher of most is Hesiod. It is him they know as knowing
most, who did not recognize day and night: they are one.
XVIII continues the thought of XVI (‘eyes and ears are poor wit-
nesses’), applying it not to the ordinary perception of the man in the
street but to the claims of experts: such learning will not give the
relevant kind of understanding. That requires something more, some-
thing there conceived as speaking the right language and here called
noos or ‘intelligence’. Noos (Attic nous) is, among other things, the
capacity to speak and to listen well. The word can even denote the
meaning or intention of what is said. (See Powell's Lexicon s.v. noos,
3.) This is a specialized development from the more general sense of
noos as what someone ‘has in mind’, the character and intentions of
men which underlie their words and actions. Thus Odysseus in his
108 | Commentary: XVIII—XIX (D. 40, 57)
travels ‘came to recognize (egnó) the noos of many men’, as the
Odyssey tells us. But like phronein, which has the neutral sense of
‘thinking’ but the laudatory sense of ‘thinking well, using good sense’,
the term noos also has a normative use. Thus doing something ‘with
noos’ means doing it in a reasonable way; acting ‘without noos’ means
acting foolishly. The word has its positive sense here, as in XXX (D.
114); cf. LIX (D. 104).
There is no inconsistency between this depreciation of ‘learning
many things' and the claim in VIII—X that a great deal of knowledge
and experience is required in the pursuit of wisdom. Heraclitus does
not say that the polymathié is a waste of time, only that it is not
enough: that the mere accumulation of information will not yield
understanding, unless it is accompanied by some fundamental insight.
Four exemplars of learning are named here. Hesiod is the poet of
the remote past, almost two centuries earlier than Heraclitus, whose
didactic poems had come to enjoy the status of revered handbooks
familiar to every educated Greek: the Theogony as the authoritative
account of origins, dynasties, and family connections among the gods,
the Works and Days as a summa of practical lore, from farming and
astronomy to instruction on unlucky days. As an established expert
on all matters human and divine, Hesiod is a natural target. Pythagoras
may be named next to Hesiod because he, alone among Heraclitus'
recent predecessors, had achieved a kind of legendary prestige within
his own lifetime. Xenophanes and Hecataeus have a narrower claim
to fame: they represent the diffusion of Milesian Aistorié in literary
form.
From our perspective on the history of early Greek philosophy,
gained from Aristotle and the Theophrastean doxography, it is
natural to wonder why we find no mention here of the three Milesians
whom we think of as the creators of the new science: Thales, Anaxi-
mander, and Anaximenes. Thales! name will in fact occur in XXIV.
Heraclitus' silence concerning Anaximander and Anaximenes is prob-
ably neither the result of ignorance nor a sign of special respect.
Heraclitus (like Plato after him) simply did not think of himself as
addressing the narrow audience that would be familiar with the work
of these men. (They are not mentioned by any extant writer before
Aristotle, and by scarcely anyone later outside of the technical doxo-
graphic tradition.) Xenophanes and Hecataeus were influential authors
in their own right and would be known to a wider public.
The attack on Hesiod in XIX provides the first explicit riddle, and
the first clue as to the content of Heraclitus’ logos: day and night are
Commentary: XVIII—XIX (D. 40, 57) 109
one. The point of the riddle is sharpened by the ironical use of three
different verbs for ‘to know’: epistanta: for the popular intelligence
which selects this teacher; eidenai for the knowledge they ascribe to
him, and Heraclitus’ favored term ginoskein for the cognition which
is denied to Hesiod.
The content of such cognition is expressed here by an unexplained
assertion of unity between night and day. This is one Heraclitean
riddle about whose solution we can be reasonably certain. It stands
first as a kind of emblematic statement for the doctrine of unity or
interdependence between opposing powers that constitutes the gen-
eral pattern and the formal theme for Heraclitus' teaching. It also
represents a quite specific insight of an almost technical sort.
Hesiod had conceived Night (Nyx) in the manner of early mythic
thought, as a positive force which blots out the light of day and the
vision of men, as death blots out human life. In Hesiod's view, Night
is naturally paired with her opposite number Day, whom she meets at
the door of the underworld, one leaving as the other returns from the
trip above ground (Theogony 748—57). No pattern of opposition
seems more firmly grounded in the basic experience of mankind than
that between daylight and nocturnal darkness. So no affirmation of
the unity of opposites could be more striking nor, at first glance,
more paradoxical. But the paradox is only apparent. The natural unit
of time, constant throughout the year, is not the day but what the
Greeks later called the nychthémeron, the day-and-night interval of
twenty-four hours. The astronomers of early Greece had no clocks,
but their interest in the calendar made them pay close attention to
the changing length of daylight through the year. The discovery of
the nychthémeron is just the discovery that the nights get shorter as
the days get longer, though the time from noon to noon does not
change. The doxography reports, and the fragments of Heraclitus
confirm, that considerable attention was paid to the measurement of
solstices and equinoxes, and thus to the regular correlation between
the visible course of the sun and the relative length of day and night.
The knowledge of solstices or tropat, as the place where and the time
when the sun annually reaches its farthest point to the north and to
the south, is as old as Homer and Hesiod; but such matters came
under more intensive study in Miletus in the sixth century, probably
under Babylonian influence.7! I have no doubt that these are the
‘measures’ of the sun referred to below in XLIV (D. 94), where they
are said to be enforced by Justice herself. Something similar must be
intended by the ‘limits of dawn and evening’ in XLV (D. 120), over
110 Commentary: ХХ (D. 106)
which Zeus has set his guardian. The word for solstices, tropa:, occurs
as a cosmological term in XXXVIII (D. 31A). The insight that night
has no positive force but is merely the absence of sunlight, and there-
fore varies directly with the changing course of the sun, is clearly
expressed in XLVI (D. 99): without the sun it would be night. In this
apparently childish remark lies the solution to our riddle and the real
point of this attack on Hesiod.7? Far from being separate and irrecon-
cilable powers, day and night are complementary aspects of a single
unit.
This riddle and its solution is a paradigm for the relation between
the logos of Heraclitus and the polymathié of Ionian science. The
new science has provided Heraclitus with a much clearer understand-
ing of the relationship between solar motion and length of night-time
than was available to Hesiod. But no amount of Aistorié or astro-
nomical knowledge alone could situate this relationship within a uni-
versal pattern of interdependent or co-variant opposition — within
the general framework that we call Heraclitus’ ‘doctrine of opposites’.
And this doctrine, as expressed in the identification of night and day,
is itself a symbol and a clue for the understanding of human life and
death as a unity, which forms the central insight in what Heraclitus
means by ‘wisdom’,
XX
ХХ (0.106) Plutarch: [Heraclitus attacked Hesiod for counting some days as
good, others as bad, because he did not recognize that the nature (physis) of
every day is one.]
It is not clear whether this is a separate criticism of Hesiod or a variant
on XIX (D. 57).73 It seems unlikely that Heraclitus would have
diluted his attack on Hesiod’s doctrine of opposites — of which Night
and Day are splendid examples — by turning to the conceptually less
interesting contrast between lucky and unlucky days; but the exist-
ence of this saying in two independent forms (Plutarch and Seneca)
makes it difficult to reject out of hand. Perhaps the reference is not
to the annual course of the sun and its effect upon the balance of
night and day but rather to the nature of the sun itself as a mani-
festation of cosmic fire; or to the equivalence between one day and
its successor (see below, p. 225).7*
Commentary: XXI (D. 42) and XXII (D. 56) 111
XXI
XXI(D.42) [He said that] Homer deserves to be expelled from the compe-
tition and beaten with a staff — and Archilochus too!
This remark presupposes that the poems of Archilochus, like those of
Homer, were recited by rhapsodes in public competitions at the fes-
tival games (agónes), in connection with athletic contests. (Compare
the situation a century later, when Plato names Archilochus and
Hesiod with Homer as the standard authors for rhapsodic compe-
tition, Jon 531A.) Heraclitus takes the wise words of all three ‘official’
poets — Homer, Archilochus, and Hesiod — as targets for his attack.
As Bollack-Wismann have pointed out (p. 157), XXI can be read as
beginning with an invective against Homer in the salty style of Archi-
lochus himself, and then turning the new weapon against its inventor.
The patron of the rhapsodes, whose poems were the original subject
of recitation, deserves to be punished with his own symbol, the
rhapsode's staff or rhabdos. But the competitor who would replace
him is expelled in turn by the same staff.’5
XXII
XXII (D. 56) Меп are deceived in the recognition of what is obvious, like
Homer who was wisest of all the Greeks. For he was deceived by boys killing lice,
who said: what we see and catch we leave behind; what we neither see nor catch,
we carry away.
This fragment gives the solution to what seems to be a traditional
riddle. But it poses its own puzzle: why does Heraclitus find the story
significant?
In the Lives of Homer that circulated in late antiquity, the riddle
of the lice is regularly cited in connection with Homer's death: the
poet is usually said to have died of grief at not being able to guess the
answer./9 The later versions emphasize Homer's blindness, and that
is probably presupposed by XXII. If so, we have a parallel to II (D.
34): as deafness there represents men's hearing without comprehen-
sion, so here the failure to recognize what is clearly visible (ta
phanera) is compared to Homer's blindness.
Now the story does serve Heraclitus’ purpose of showing the
wisest of the Greeks to be a fool: he cannot guess a riddle known to
children.7? But the riddle itself should be meaningful. Bollack-
112 Commentary: XXIII—XXIV (D. 105, 38)
Wismann propose an etymological play here on the word for lice,
phtheir, phonetically identical with the first syllable of phtheiré ‘to
destroy’: what the boys are doing is literally killing the killers; and
this is what Homer fails to understand. Furthermore, the riddle has
the symmetrical form of a double paradox: denying the expected
consequence of ‘seeing and catching’, and then affirming this conse-
quence for not seeing and catching. If the play on killing pAtherres is
a clue, we might well be reminded of Euripides’ paradox which has
the same double form: ‘Who knows if life be death, and death be
regarded as life below?’ (fr. 638 N). Heraclitus himself will offer a
paradox of this form, in which mortals and immortals exchange
positions with regard to life and death (XCII, D. 62). Of course no
one could possibly guess this meaning on a first reading of XXII. But
then the device of proleptic statement, or more generally of resonance,
implies that many dimensions of meaning will not be immediately
accessible on our first contact with the text. (‘Men fail to comprehend
this logos when they hear it for the first time.")
The proposed solution becomes even more plausible if we suppose
that the riddle of the lice was already associated with the story of
Homer's death. For then it is natural to understand the 'recognition
of what is apparent’, in which men are deceived, by reference to
Homer's perplexity in the face of his own death. The etymology of
lice (phtheires) as ‘destroyers’ thus comes into full play.
Heraclitus’ detailed presentation of this riddle, in one of the longest
of the fragments, suggests that genuine wisdom is like an enigma, dif-
ficult and obvious at the same time, or difficult at first and obvious
later. It also suggests that wisdom has something to do with what we
see and grasp, but more to do with what we ordinarily do not see and
do not grasp.
XXITI-XXIV
XXIII (D. 105) Scholia on Iliad XVIII.251: [Heraclitus calls Homer an astron-
omer. ]
XXIV (D. 38) Diogenes Laertius: [According to some sources, Thales seems to
have been the first to practise astronomy and predict solar eclipses and solstices
... Heraclitus also bears witness to him.]
There is not much to be made of these bits of doxographical infor-
mation, except that the names of both Homer and Thales were men-
tioned in connection with astronomy, perhaps in the same context
Commentary: XXV (D. 129) 113
(as Marcovich has suggested), just as Heraclitus mentions Hesiod and
Hecataeus together in XVIII (D. 40). Exactly what Heraclitus said
about Thales we can scarcely guess. But the omission of Thales! name
in XVIII (D. 40), where it might easily have stood between Hesiod
and Pythagoras, suggests that the tone was not one of violent hostility;
and that is on the whole confirmed by the context in Diogenes. Prob-
ably the reference to Thales reflected his legendary fame as a star-
gazer, as in the story of the eclipse in Herodotus 1.74.2: a similar
story seems to have been mentioned by Xenophanes (DK 21.B 19).
The reference to Homer in XXIII is equally uninformative. Its
authenticity has been questioned on the grounds that the scholiasts
who report it assume that astrology is meant, as we can see from the
verses they cite. Now there is no trace of such astrology in Greece in
the time of Heraclitus or for a century or two thereafter. But it does
not follow that we should reject the whole reference. The astrological
interpretation with its selection of Homeric verses must be the work
of a Hellenistic commentator. But there would have been nothing for
him to comment on if he had not found some connection between
Homer and astronomy in Heraclitus’ own text.78
XXV
XXV (D. 129) Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus pursued inquiry (historie) further
than all other men and, choosing what he liked from these compositions, he made
a wisdom of his own: much learning, artful knavery.
Diels believed XXV was a forgery, because of the reference to written
‘compositions’ or treatises (syngrapha:) earlier than Pythagoras,
apparently dealing with scientific research or inquiry. Since its defence
by Reinhardt and Wilamowitz, XXV is now universally recognized as
authentic, but there is still room for doubt as to exactly what ‘com-
positions’ are referred to.79 The word syngraphai, like its Attic equiv-
alent syngrammata, normally refers to works in prose. The earliest
prose treatises known to us are those of Anaximander and Anaxi-
menes of Miletus and Pherecydes of Syros. As it happens, there was
an ancient tradition associating Pythagoras with Pherecydes, the
author of a strange mythic cosmogony of which some portions have
been preserved.8° The treatises of Hecataeus, known to Heraclitus as
embodiments of Milesian polymathié (see XVIII), were probably too
recent for him to have in mind as sources for Pythagoras. But there
were no doubt other prose treatises circulating in the neighbourhood
114 Commentary: XXVI (D. 81)
of Miletus, Samos, and Ephesus, of which we know little or nothing.8!
We can only guess what teachings or exploits of Pythagoras would
have provoked Heraclitus’ particular indignation. He would probably
have been shocked by Pythagoras’ claim to recall his previous incar-
nations, which might have seemed like a caricature of the notion of
pre-existence and survival of the psyche which plays a part in
Heraclitus’ own thought. For all his ‘scientific’ Ionian background,
there was something of the sorcerer and wonder-worker about
Pythagoras which was probably inseparable from his enormous pres-
tige in the Greek colonies of South Italy and his considerable repu-
tation throughout the Greek world. Though he was certainly no
shaman in the sense of being a primitive witch-doctor, he does seem
to have cultivated the role of charismatic leader with superior powers,
like bilocation — a man who would be venerated by his followers as
more than human, but regarded by outsiders as something of a fraud.
That Heraclitus shared the latter view is clear from XXVI, if indeed
it refers to Pythagoras.
XXVI
XXVI (D. 81) Philodemus: [According to Heraclitus <Pythagoras was?> ‘the
prince of imposters.']
In Philodemus' text the picturesque phrase kopidon archégos refers
to rhetoric, not to Pythagoras. For its application to Pythagoras we
have only indirect evidence.8? The invective certainly fits Pythagoras.
There may be a play on archégos (translated here as ‘prince’) in the
sense of ‘founder’, ‘the one who starts things going’. Pythagoras was
not only an imposter himself, he founded a school! This corporate
relationship between initiator and followers seems to be reflected
again in the warning of LXXXVII (D. 28B): Justice will catch up not
only with those who invent lies (pseudón tektones) but also with
those who swear to them (martyres).
XXVII
XXVII (D. 108) Of all those whose accounts (logoi) I have heard, none has
got so far as this: to recognize what is wise, set apart from all.
Here for the first time (in my arrangement) Heraclitus begins to dis-
close the positive content of his doctrine, so far hinted at only by
Commentary: XXVII (D. 108) 115
the mysterious assertion of the unity of night and day (in XIX, D.
57). The imagery of the /ogos is now reversed: at first it was
Heraclitus’ account, or the logos as such, to which others must
attend (and so again in XXXVI, D. 50); now it is others who do the
talking and Heraclitus is cast in the role of listener. But he listens
in vain, for it is not in their words that he can find a recognition
(gindskein) of what he is seeking. This missing content is designated
by the neuter form of the word for wise man or sage: sophon. Those
who passed for wise did not deserve the name: they did not know
what wisdom is, and hence were separated from it.
The last words of the sentence present an ambiguity that recurs
frequently: the form pantén ‘of all’ may be read either as masculine
(i.e. animate) or neuter (inanimate). The difference is considerable:
is the wise separate ‘from all men’ or ‘from all things’? The first read-
ing suggests wisdom as ordinarily conceived, a property men wish to
possess, though in fact they fail to attain it. The second seems to
posit the ‘wise’ as a cosmic or divine principle, separate or trans-
cendent like the Intelligence (nous) of Anaxagoras (fr. 12) which is
‘not mixed with anything else’.
Heraclitus could easily have specified his meaning by adding the
word ‘men’ or ‘things’ after ‘all’. Since he did not choose to eliminate
the ambiguity, it is not up to us to do so: the principle of hermen-
eutical generosity requires us to keep both options open. In this case
there is good evidence to support both readings of panton: (1) that
wisdom is inaccessible to men is, in effect, stated by LV—LVIII (D.
78, 82—3, 79, 70); whereas (2) ‘the wise’ is asserted as a unique divine
principle of the universe in CXVIII (D. 32). Since the same ambiguity
between masculine and neuter readings of pronouns and quantifier-
words will be found again and again, the possibility of two interpret-
ations is not likely to be accidental.
It is significant that, when Heraclitus begins to specify the content
of that insight which perception and inquiry alone cannot provide,
his characterization is strictly ambivalent between a human property
that is rare and difficult and a cosmic power which is unique and
remote from all others. For it is precisely this ambiguity or duality
between the life of man and the life of the cosmos that structures
Heraclitus’ entire discourse, as in the duality already noted between
logos as the utterance of a man and logos as the pattern of cosmic
process. It is just this duality, this interlocking of man and cosmos
expressed by the double value of logos and sophon, as by the double
116 Commentary: XXVIII (D. 101) and XXIX (D. 116)
reading of the pronoun рапібп, which constitutes the ‘recognition’
that other men have missed.
XXVIII
XXVIII (D. 101) I went in search of myself.
This is as straightforward a paradox as any in Heraclitus. Normally
one goes looking for someone else. How can I be the object of my
own search? This will make sense only if my self is somehow absent,
hidden, or difficult to find.84 Thus XXVIII states, or presupposes,
what one might have thought was a distinctly modern reading of the
Delphi gnothi sauton: self-knowledge is difficult because a man is
divided from himself; he presents a problem for himself to resolve.
We are surprisingly close here to the modern or Christian idea that a
person may be alienated from his own (true) self.
XXIX
XXIX (D. 116) It belongs to all men to know (gindskein) themselves and think
well (sóphronein, keep their thinking sound).
The connection between self-knowledge and séphronein is taken for
granted in the archaic conception of wisdom preserved in the sayings
of the Sages and inscribed at the entrance to the sixth-century temple
of Apollo at Delphi, where méden agan ‘nothing too much’ was
written next to gnóthi sauton ‘know (recognize) thyself’. Both
maxims might reasonably be paraphrased as sophronei ‘be of sound
mind'.85
The pairing of self-recognition and sound thinking is thus tra-
ditional; what is unusual in XXIX is the claim that all men have a
share in this excellence. The Delphic injunction suggests that self-
knowledge is difficult, and Heraclitus himself implies as much in
XXVIII. So XXIX presents an apparent contradiction both with the
Delphic motto and with Heraclitus’ own words elsewhere.
The contradiction is not unresolvable; it renews the initial paradox
of the logos which is there before us, but which we are unable to
grasp. Self-knowledge and world-knowledge will in the end converge
in this comprehension of the common /ogos. If we interpret XXVIII
‘I went in search of myself? as meaning ‘I found in myself the universal
logos, the cosmic law', we ignore the literal sense and the enigmatic
Commentary: XXX (D. 114) 117
technique by which Heraclitus presents his thought. But this is indeed
the final implication of what he is saying. Self-knowledge, like under-
standing the /ogos, belongs to all men by right. But in fact precious
few will achieve it.
The formal challenge to the Delphic proverb, the apparent self-
contradiction, and the etymological overtones of sd-phronein brought
out by the parallel to ginóskein, should suffice to guarantee the auth-
enticity of XXIX (D. 116) against persistent doubts. These doubts
rest only on the questionable judgment that the thought and wording
of XXIX are too banal for Heraclitus.96
XXX
ХХХ (0.114) Speaking with understanding (хул поді) they must hold fast to
what is shared (to? xynói) by all, as a city holds to its law (tõi nomói) and even
more firmly. For all human laws are nourished by a divine one. It prevails as it
will and suffices for all and is more than enough.
The juxtaposition with XXIX (D. 116) is meant to suggest that the
subject of XXX is precisely ‘all men’, whose right to self-knowledge
or sóphronein is asserted in XXIX. XXX thus specifies what conditions
must be satisfied for that right to be realized in fact.
The text contains two examples of the animate-inanimate (mascu-
line-neuter) ambiguity already noted. In the phrase ‘common to all’,
pantón can mean either ‘all human beings’ or ‘all things’, precisely as
in XXVII (D. 108). Similarly, in ‘it suffices for all’ pasi can be ‘for all
men’ or ‘for all things'.? There is a comparable ambiguity in the
phrase *(nourished) by the divine one’, which can be construed either
in the neuter, with ‘the divine’ (theion) as a term for the supreme
cosmic principle, or as the masculine form agreeing with nomos: ‘the
one divine law’. I suspect that this duality is also deliberate: the single
divine principle, *what is common to all', is and is not willing to be
designated as nomos ‘law’. (For this ambivalence with regard to a par-
ticular name, cf. CXVIII, D. 32.)
The community of logos is expressed here by the phrase ‘holding
fast to (or ‘strengthening oneself with’ ischyrizesthat) what is common
to all (107 xynói panton)’, after the initial word play of ‘speaking
(together) with understanding' (xyn noo: legontas) with its double
allusion to the logos (‘speech’) and to ‘what is common’ (xyn). But
what is it that can teach understanding (noos) in speaking and listen-
ing? What cognition can keep one's thinking sound (sd-phronein) and
118 | Commentary: XXX (D. 114)
prevent it from sinking into the private phronésis (III, D. 2) that has
lost contact with what is shared by all? XXIX (D. 116) located the
salvaging of one's thought in self-recognition, in what might seem to
be the most private of cognitions. Yet Heraclitus everywhere insists
that soundness and safety lies in what is public: the civic law is as
essential as the city wall to the security of those who dwell within
(LXV, D. 44). What is the connection between se/f-recognition and
this stable reliance upon what is common?
The clue lies in the notion of self-alienation implied in XXVIII: ‘I
went in search of myself.' The lost or hidden self must be precisely
the common, in search of which the private self or ‘I’ must go, in
order for one's thinking to be safe and sound. Heraclitus son of
Bloson, an individual of Ephesus, went seeking for his own self, and
what he found was something common not only to all the citizens of
Ephesus but to all men, and not only to all men but to all things
whatsoever. Thus did his self-knowing become soó-phronein, the sal-
vaging of thinking through understanding (хуп noói), through hold-
ing on to ‘what is common (xyno:) to all’.
We can see why the nomos, the public law and moral tradition of
a city like Ephesus, should be chosen as an illustration of what pro-
duces sound thinking, but why it is only an illustration.88 It is com-
mon, but not common enough: common to all Ephesians but not
common to all men and all things. As a result, in the search for
soundness of mind one must hold on to something stronger, the
source not only of this but of ‘all human laws’. The Stoics and other
later writers had no hesitation in speaking here of ‘divine law’ or
‘natural law’ (as in Lucretius’ lex naturai). But in the archaic
language of Heraclitus the term nomos has too human and too social
a sound to lend itself to such a locution. Hence Heraclitus hints at,
but does not express the notion of a ‘divine law’ thezos nomos.
Instead he leaves us with a characterization of the common as ‘the
divine one’.
We can see the syntactic ambiguity between ‘all men’ and ‘all
things’ in XXX as a formal expression of the view that an individual
man, searching for his own self, will come to rest and to rely upon a
deeper identity which is that of the universe as a whole. The terms in
which this unity is described recall the traditional references to the
supreme god, and prepare us for Heraclitus’ own introduction of the
name of Zeus (in XLV, D. 120; CXVIII, D. 32).89
Commentary: XXXI (D. 113) and XXXII (D. 112) 119
XXXI
XXXI (D. 113) Thinking (to phronein) is shared by all.
We meet once more the ambiguous pronoun pasi: shared by all men?
or all things? The first reading simply restates in a weaker form the
thought of XXIX (D. 116: so-phronein belongs to all men), adding
the notion of what is common to all (as in XXX); ‘What is “соттоп
to all” is not what all, or almost all, happen to think, but what all
should think, and would, if they had sense' (Vlastos, 347). Yet this
leaves XXXI essentially repetitious, and tends to justify the doubts
of those who would condemn it as inauthentic. But the ambiguity of
pasi (in contrast with the unambiguous anthropoisi pasi in XXIX) per-
mits a stronger reading, which has been ignored only because it is
perplexing: “Thinking is common to all things.’ Taken literally, this .
implies something like panpsychism: if all things have some thought
or perception, all things must be alive. This view may seem strange to
some, but it is seriously held by Spinoza and Leibniz in modern
times, and unmistakably held by Empedocles in the fifth century
B.C.: ‘For know that all things have thought (phronésis) and a share
of mind (nóma = noéma).' (DK 31.B 110, 10; cf. panta ‘all things’ in
B 102—3 and 107.) This stronger meaning saves XXXI from banality
by reinterpreting ‘what is shared by all’ as a kind of thought or intelli-
gence. And this makes it easier for us to understand how self-
knowledge can lead to the knowledge of what is common to all, since
the universal principle is understood precisely as thinking, the activity
of an intelligent psyche. Such panpsychism gives a new dimension to
the ambivalence of Heraclitus’ concept of ‘the wise’, oriented both
towards the human and towards the cosmic. And the strong reading
of XXXI fits well with the doctrine of the limitless psyche in XXXV
(D. 45).
XXXII
XXXII (D. 112) Thinking well (séphronein) is the greatest excellence and wis-
dom: to act and speak what is true, perceiving things according to their nature
(physis).
This is the most important of the three fragments dealing with think-
ing (phronein) and thinking well (or sound thinking, sõphronein) that
are preserved only in the Anthology of Ethical Sayings composed by
120 Commentary: XXXII (D. 112)
John Stobaeus, the other two being XXIX (D. 116) and XXXI (D.
113). The authenticity of one or more of these has been questioned.9°
The burden of proof properly falls on those who would deny auth-
enticity, since all three citations are found together with other frag-
ments that are indisputably genuine, and together with no fragments
that are clearly inauthentic.?! Since Stobaeus' work is a kind of
scrapbook, the documentary value of his testimony varies greatly
from case to case, and his reliability at any given point is only as good
as that of the source he happens to be following. Now in the two con-
texts that interest us, in his chapters On Virtue and On Temperance
(sophrosyné) in Book III, we find quotations from Heraclitus of great
importance and unquestionable authenticity, which in some
instances are preserved in no other source. That is the case for XXVII
(D. 108), XXX (D. 114), the important double fragment LXVII (D.
110—11), and the description of the drunken man with the wet soul
(CVI, D. 117). Since neither context contains any manifest forgeries,
the natural presumption (followed by Bywater, Diels, and Bollack-
Wismann) is that all of the quotations from Heraclitus in these two
brief sections of Stobaeus should be authentic.9?2 It would really be
remarkable if an inferior paraphrase had been handed down to us
sandwiched in between XXVII (D. 108), LXVII (D. 110—11) and
XXX (D. 114).
To outweigh these circumstantial probabilities, a critic would have
to show that the language and thought of XXXII cannot belong to
Heraclitus. The interpretation which follows is therefore an implicit
defense of the fragment. The question of authenticity is of some
importance, since XXXII is the only fragment in which the word
areté ‘excellence’ (or ‘virtue’) occurs, and the only one to character-
ize sophronein in a way that goes beyond the Delphic assimilation to
self-knowledge in XXIX (D. 116). If XXXII is not his, Heraclitus has
nothing really original to say on séphrosyné, the paramount virtue of
his age.93 But if it belongs to Heraclitus, XXXII is his most interest-
ing utterance as a moral philosopher.
The interpretation depends upon the punctuation, which either
falls after the third word, megisté ‘greatest’, or after the fifth, sophie
*wisdom'. The former punctuation, given in Stobaeus and most
modern editions, allows only two words in praise of sóphronein and
passes on to speak of sophie. The second punctuation, proposed by
Bollack-Wismann, turns the whole fragment into an explication of
sophronein. I accept the latter construal, which gives a richer sense.
The first clause, then, states that thinking well or soundness of
Commentary: XXXII (D. 112) 121
mind (s6-phronein) is the greatest excellence (areté) which a man can
have and also the greatest wisdom.?* We are a long way from the
Homeric conception of areté as the warrior's virtue of valor and skill
in combat, but we are not far from the Delphic parallel between
sophronein and self-knowledge encountered in XXIX (D. 116). The
conjunction of sóphronein with areté, although post-Homeric, is a
familiar theme from early Attic grave inscriptions, which regularly
speak of the dead as ‘brave (agathos) and sensible (séphrén)’ or men-
tion his ‘courage (areté) and good sense (sóphrosyne)'.95 In the
formula for archaic verse epitaphs areté and sophrosyné preserve
their Homeric values, the former designating manly courage and the
latter prudence or good sense. But Heraclitus has taken over the tra-
ditional formula only to transform its meaning. He has in effect
rendered the Homeric notion of saophrosyné or good judgment by
sophié, so that areté and sophié here represent the two virtues of
valor and discretion conjoined in the grave inscriptions; and he has
equated both of these with his own conception of sound thinking
(50-рћтопет) modelled on Delphic self-knowledge. Thus Heraclitus
does not dissent from praise of valor and good sense; he only insists
that these virtues in their highest form are united in thinking well, in
salvaging one’s thought in the self-knowledge that is also a recognition
of what is common to all.
The conception of ‘sound thinking’ articulated in the first clause
by the nouns ‘excellence’ and ‘wisdom’, is expressed in the second
clause by two infinitives: ‘acting and speaking what is true’.9® Speak-
ing the truth is not a virtue which the Greeks admired without quali-
fication, nor would it always appear to be the course of prudence.
One Homeric example of saophrosyné describes Telemachus' dis-
cretion in not revealing his father's true identity but deliberately
accepting Odysseus’ disguise as an old beggar (Od. XXIII.30). To
identify truthful speech as the highest excellence is to take up an
uncompromising position on an issue where the traditional Greek
attitude was (and is) ambivalent. But this emphasis on 'speaking the
true! is what we might expect from the spokesman for a logos *which
is (true) forever'; and it echoes Heraclitus' own promise in his pro-
logue to ‘tell it like it is’. The terminology of the proem is again
suggested by the phrase ‘perceiving (or ‘noticing’ epaiontes) things
according to their physis’. (Cf. 1.2: ‘distinguishing each according to
its nature.) Accepting the Delphic view of sound thinking as self-
knowledge, Heraclitus thus reinterprets it as speech and perception
in accordance with the universal logos.
122 Commentary: XXXII (D. 112)
On the punctuation adopted here, the two infinitives ‘to speak and
to act’ belong together: in chiastic order ‘acting’ will echo areté (*man-
liness’) just as ‘speaking’ echoes sophié (‘wisdom’).9’ The difficulty
with this natural reading is that it implies the phrase ‘to act what is
true’ (aléthea poiein), which is not so easy to understand.?8 I have
not found a parallel to this expression in Greek. In rhetorical con-
texts, a fifth-century author may speak of the ‘truth of deeds’ in
contrast to a distorted appearance or a false and partial report, but
what he means by ‘truth’ here is what really happened; the contrast
is conceived from the point of view of the hearer or spectator (who
might be deceived), and not from the point of view of the agent.99
Since it is not clear what would be meant by doing the true, the
reader may be tempted to construe poiein with what follows rather
than with what precedes. Heraclitus will then speak not of ‘acting the
true’ but of ‘acting according to the nature of things (kata physin),
perceptively (epaiontes)’, or perhaps ‘perceiving things according to
their nature, and acting accordingly’. (So roughly DK and Marcovich,
p. 96.) These readings are defensible but not obviously correct, as.
can be seen from the disagreement among the commentators.
Here again I suggest that Heraclitus has cunningly left us in
suspense between two constructions (as in the first clause in I.1), to
provoke us into some reflection on what ‘acting in accordance with
(one’s knowledge of) the nature of things’ might mean, and how that
might relate to the other reading ‘to speak and act what is true’.
The solution I propose is to give aléthes ‘true’ its etymological
value: ‘not concealed’, ‘not hidden in one’s heart’.!99 Soundness of
thinking will then mean to speak and act the true in the sense of
communicating the logos in ‘words and deeds’ (epea kai erga, 1.2),
sharing with others one’s perception of how things hang together in
unity and are also distinguished in their own nature (physis). The
man whose thinking is sound will not hide the truth but signify it in
his actions as in his words. In this he will imitate the lord of Delphi,
who does not hide the truth but shows it with a sign (XXXIII), and
whose lesson to mankind is séphronein.
What is distinctive here is the meaning of self-knowledge as recog-
nition of one's true or hidden self, and the connection of this with
knowledge of a universal /ogos which distinguishes things ‘according to
their nature'. More revolutionary still is the cosmic dimension given
to sóphronein by the claim (in XXXI) that ‘thinking’ (phronein) is
common to all, if this is taken to mean that all things think. For if
phronein characterizes the whole universe of things, then sound think-
Commentary: XXXIII (D. 93) 123
ing means more than keeping one's wits whole; it means to salvage
what is common, and hence precious, throughout the universe.
XXXIII
XXXIII (D. 93) The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither declares nor con-
ceals but gives a sign.
The description does not name Apollo, but identifies the god by rank
(anax), function, and locality. (Bollack-Wismann, p. 273, suggest that
this circumlocution is itself an instance of the Pythian style.) The
god's mode of utterance is said to be neither direct statement (oute
legei) nor concealment (oute kryptei) — which would mean falsehood,
on the interpretation of aléthea ‘truth’ suggested above — but 'signify-
ing’, giving a sign (alla sémainet). There is no doubt that Heraclitus is
referring to the Delphic practice of giving advice in indirect form, by
imagery, riddle, and ambiguity, so that it was obvious to a man of
sense that an oracle required an interpretation. Even when the sur-
face meaning is clear, it may be necessary to look for a second mean-
ing underneath — as Oedipus discovered to his hurt, when he forgot
to ask which man was his father; and likewise Croesus, when he for-
got to ask whose kingdom he would destroy. Socrates, on the other
hand, shows his wisdom by refusing to take an apparently unambigu-
ous oracle at face value. Instead he asked ‘What is the god saying, and
what meaning does he intend by this riddle (ti pote ainittetat)?’10!
‘Giving a sign’, then, means uttering one thing that in turn signifies
another — what the Greeks called hyponoza, a ‘hint’ or ‘allegory’. The
sign may be of different types: image, ambiguous wording, or the
like. The Delphic mode of utterance presents a plurality or complex-
ity of meaning, so that reflection is required, and unusual insight, if
the proper interpretation is to be discovered.
Is the Delphic mode a paradigm for Heraclitus’ own riddling style,
as readers since antiquity have supposed? Or is the complexity of
meaning to be located in the nature of things, in the structure of
appearance understood as a logos, a kind of meaningful language?192
There is much to be said for either view, and we need not choose
between them. One can scarcely miss the Delphic elements in
Heraclitus’ own style. But the notion of men who ‘listen without
comprehension’, who fail to understand because they have ‘barbarian
souls’, is presented as a characterization of the human condition, not
merely a description of Heraclitus’ own readers or auditors. It is
124 Commentary: XXXIV (D. 92)
reality itself, or the nature of things, that requires close investigation
and readiness to discover the unexpected, ‘for it is trackless and un-
explored' (VII, D. 18). These two interpretations form the fore-
ground and the background meanings of XXXIII, the obvious sense
(applying to Heraclitus’ own style) and the hyponoza that emerges
only upon reflection (applying to the nature of things understood as
logos). In this way the semantic complexity that is described by
XXXIII in reference to Apollo is also illustrated by these words in
their reference to our double /ogos: the discourse of Heraclitus and
the structure of reality. And this parallel between Heraclitus' style
and the obscurity of the nature of things, between the difficulty of
understanding him and the difficulty in human perception, is not
arbitrary: to speak plainly about such a subject would be to falsify it
in the telling, for no genuine understanding would be communicated.
The only hope of 'getting through' to the audience is to puzzle and
provoke them into reflection. Hence the only appropriate mode of
explanation is allusive and indirect: Heraclitus is consciously and
unavoidably ‘obscure’,!03
The point is not that Heraclitus’ paradoxical style is designed to
mirror the nature of reality, if this is thought of in the Tractatus
sense of ‘the world’, as a structure independent of human under-
standing. The paradox lies in any attempt to comprehend and formu-
late this structure in human terms: ‘opposites are one, and conflict is
justice’. It is not that reality as such is contradictory; what is
reflected in the semantic difficulty of interpreting these utterances is
the epistemic difficulty of grasping such a structure, the cosmic logos,
as the underlying unity for our own experience of opposition and
contrast.
XXXIV
XXXIV (D.92) Plutarch; [‘The Sibyl with raving mouth’, according to Heraclitus
‘utters things mirthless’ and unadorned and unperfumed, and her voice carries
through a thousand years because of the god «who speaks through her>.]
Here again the problem is to identify just what Heraclitus said about
the Sibyl, and to specify what her mode of prophecy is a sign for. In
both respects we are at a disadvantage by comparison with XXXIII
(D. 93), for in that case we can be reasonably certain that Heraclitus’
own words have been preserved. In XXXIV Plutarch has so blended
the citation into his own text that it is scarcely possible to tell how
Commentary: XXXIV (D. 92) 125
much is accurate quotation. Some editors would give the whole sen-
tence to Heraclitus; Reinhardt denied him even the mention of the
Sibyl! No doubt the truth lies somewhere in between. Heraclitus
must have referred to the Sibyl, for otherwise there would be no
reason for Plutarch to mention her here, where he is discussing the
Delphic Pythia. On the other hand, the calculation of a thousand
years is made from Plutarch's point of view, not from that of
Heraclitus.!0* Recent editors have agreed that only the words placed
within quotation marks above belong to Heraclitus, and the rest to
Plutarch.!95 But Plutarch's paraphrase may contain further traces of
Heraclitus' thought. Heraclitus is likely to have intended some refer-
ence to divine possession or seizure, since the Sibyl is precisely the
type of prophetess who, like Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon,
bursts into agonized utterance of a vision in her state as entheos,
invaded by АроПо.!06 If her utterances are ‘mirthless’ or ‘gloomy’
(agelasta), that is not only because her typical vision is of a coming
disaster, but because the Sibylline experience of enthousiasmos is
itself a form of suffering, a kind of spiritual rape.
This is the earliest reference to the Sibyl in extant literature. It is
not clear whether the Sibyl was originally thought of as a unique indi-
vidual or as a type, whether the word ‘Sibyl’ is a proper name or a
common noun.!07 Later authors spoke of an eighth-century Sibyl
named Herophile, from the Ionian city of Erythrae not far from
Ephesus, whose oracular wanderings had left a clear trace at Delphi.108
There is no reason to suppose that the story of Herophile at Delphi
need be as old as Heraclitus; but long before his time the institution
of ecstatic prophecy had been established at Delphi in the person of
a regular priestess, the Pythia. We may think of the Pythia as a kind
of sedentary Sibyl, a holy woman who has become a fixed appendage
to a particular shrine. Whatever the historical connections may have
been between the Pythia and the Sibyl, they represent prophetic
phenomena of the same type. In contrast to oracles by signs (from
rustling oak leaves, the flight of birds, the liver of the sacrificial vic-
tim) and in contrast also to oracle by lots, both the Pythia and the
Sibyl are women who serve as ‘mediums’, who see the future in a
trance experience, in the superhuman vision of the god. It is the
woman's voice that speaks, but it is Apollo's word that is uttered.
Because of this religious parallel between Pythia and Sibyl, as the
same kind of mouthpiece for the same god, it is natural to suppose
that Heraclitus himself intended some connection between the
oracles of the Delphic god in XXXIII and those of his Ionian proph-
126 Commentary: XXXV (D. 45)
etess in XXXIV. The meaning of XXXIV would then be that just as
the Sibyl's power comes not from herself but from the god, so
Heraclitus’ authority is derived not from his own person or opinions
but from the cosmic logos in whose name he speaks: ‘listen not to me
but to the logos’ (XXXVI, D. 50).109
This view of XXXIV previously seemed attractive to me, and might
just possibly be correct. But the text which is most unmistakably
genuine is the description of the Sibyl as prophesying ‘with raving
mouth’. And from what we know about Heraclitus’ attitude to mad-
ness in CXVI (D. 15) and CXVII (D. 5), as well as his contempt for
drunkenness in CVI (D. 117), it is most unlikely that he would have
cast himself in the role of a prophet whose insight was to be com-
pared to the ecstasy of a woman possessed. It was this correct per-
ception of Heraclitus’ deep distaste for Sibylline frenzy which led
Reinhardt to doubt the authenticity of the whole fragment, since
Plutarch presents the quotation from Heraclitus as part of a positive
evaluation.!!0 But we can accept Plutarch's quotation while rejecting
his evaluation. In its original context, the contrast between the Sibyl's
madness and her social prestige as spokesman for Apollo may have
been part of Heraclitus’ critique of current religious practices, along
the lines of CXV—CXVII (D. 14, 15, D. 5): if one reflects upon the
fact that people accept wisdom from raving lips, one is likely to judge
them as mad as the Sibyl herself.
XXXV
XXXV (D. 45) You will not find out the limits of the soul (psyché) by going,
even if you travel over every way, so deep is its report (logos).
*Heraclitus is the first to have given serious thought to, and had some-
thing to say about, the soul in man' (Der Glaube der Hellenen I
(Berlin, 1931), 375). Wilamowitz's point was that the psyché in
Homer is mentioned only when it leaves the body, in death or in syn-
cope: it is the life-breath or animating ‘spirit’ which departs as a
ghost. So even for Pythagoras the psyché, although deathless, belongs
only temporarily and as it were on loan to the individual man. But
with the fuller development of the notion of personality and a more
intimate sense of identity between a man (or woman) and his (or her)
emotional life that found expression in the lyric poetry of the seventh
and sixth centuries, the time was ripe for a new conception of the
psyché as source or center of the human personality. And so we find
Commentary: XXXV (D. 45) 127
in Heraclitus, as Reinhardt said, ‘for the first time a psychology
worthy of the name’.!!!
But if there is wide agreement on the originality of Heraclitus'
view of the psyche, there is less agreement on just what that view is.
Some authors give physical accounts of Heraclitus’ doctrine which
equate the psyche with cosmic fire, or one of its privileged manifes-
tations; but Bruno Snell has proposed an interpretation which
emphasizes the psychic as such, the direct intensity of thought or
feeling denoted by ‘Innerlichkeit’ (inwardness) or ‘self-awareness’
(Entdeckung des Geistes, p. 37).
There is a grain of truth here: the philosopher who said ‘I went in
search of myself', is one who has reflected upon the nature of his
psyche in terms of his living experience. But the fragments show no
trace of a Cartesian or Platonic contrast between mind and matter,
soul and body.
We have seen that the psyche in XVI is identified as the cognitive
or rational element in human beings, and this intellectual conception
of the psyche must be emphasized here, since it has been overlooked
in several influential studies where the originality of Socrates in this
respect has been grossly overstated. Socrates’ position in the history
of philosophy is secure enough without attributing to him a revol-
utionary new concept of the psyche as a cognitive principle — a con-
cept which he might have got directly from Heraclitus, but which was
probably ‘in the air’ in fifth-century thought and usage.!1? The con-
cept was a new one, and only after Plato did it come to dominate the
earlier view of the psyche as essentially biological, emotional, or non-
rational. (The older view survives in Aristotle's conception of the
vegetative or nutritive soul, as in Plato's view of the ‘irrational’ parts
of the psyche.) Heraclitus' original readers might have expected an
account of the psyche rather more like Pindar's description of *the
image of vitality’ which ‘sleeps when the limbs are active, but shows
to sleeping men in many dreams’ a sign of future events (fr. 116
Bowra), or the more mundane view of Semonides, who urges his
friend to endure the brevity of life ‘by indulging your psyché with
whatever good things you can get’ (fr. 29.13 Diehl, assigned by some
to Simonides). In the former case the psyche is thought of as a power
of establishing contact with the supernatural in dreams; in the latter
case it takes delight in sensual pleasures and ‘the good things of life’.
Both ideas will be exploited by Heraclitus elsewhere. (For the dream
experience see XC, D. 26; for the soul in debauchery, see CVI, D.
117 and the more dubious CVIII, D. 77.) But in his own view the
psyche is primarily a principle of rational cognition.
128 | Commentary: XXXV (D. 45)
Since Heraclitus is a monist, however, the psyche is also a physical
principle. We shall see in commenting on CII (D. 36)—CIX (D. 118)
that he identifies the soul not with fire (as is often supposed) but
with atmospheric vapor, air or *exhalation', in the traditional Greek
manner.113
In the text of XXXV four points call for comment: (1) the ‘limits’
of the soul, (2) the reference to ‘finding out’, (3) the ‘way’ (hodos)
to be travelled, and (4) the /ogos which the soul has.
(1) On first reading, the mention of ‘limits’ (peirata) to which one
travels might recall the Homeric formula for a voyage ‘to the ends of
the earth’ (//. XIV.200 = 301, etc.). So Hesiod speaks of a place
where ‘the sources and limits (pezrata)’ of earth, Tartarus, sea and
heaven are located together (Theogony 738 = 809). But Heraclitus
denies that anyone can reach the limits of the psyché, no matter how
far they travel. On second reading, then, this will suggest that the
soul is limitless, apezrén in a truer sense than the ‘boundless earth’. A
reader acquainted with Milesian philosophy may recognize an echo
of the Limitless (apeiron) of Anaximander or the limitless Air of
Anaximenes: the denial of limits involves an allusion to the supreme
principle of cosmic structure.
Thus the psyche for Heraclitus plays the role of a ‘first principle’,
a Milesian arché; and hence the natural tendency of modern interpret-
ers to identify it with cosmic fire. They are right in principle though
wrong in fact. Although the psyche as such is not composed of fire,
psyche and fire are alike in playing a double role in Heraclitus’
thought. Each one represents a specific physical phenomenon, one
elemental form among others. (Thus XXXVII, D. 30 will speak of
fire 'going out' — and hence ceasing to be fire — just as CII, D. 36 will
speak of ‘the death of psyché’ in the birth of water.) At the same
time, both psyche and fire are in some sense universal, all-inclusive.
Thus Fire is exchanged for all things, and all things for fire (XL, D.
90). The universality of psyche is expressed here in the denial of
limits: wherever you travel, there psyche will be. This is what we
must expect, since XXXI (D. 113) was interpreted as a statement of
panpsychism. If all things think, then all things are alive. But if all
things are alive (empsycha), then all must have a share in psyché, the
life-principle. The soul can travel everywhere, since everything is
psychic territory. Perhaps the underlying assumption is that funda-
mental discontinuity, the emergence of life from non-life, is irrational
and unnatural. The doctrine of Thales, that ‘all things are full of
gods', which Aristotle takes to mean that psyché is mingled through-
Commentary: XXXV (D. 45) 129
out the universe (De Anima 1.5, 411а7 = DK 11.A 22), could well
apply to Heraclitus: all things are full of soul.
(2) The limitlessness of the psyche is expressed by a phrase that
has echoes elsewhere in the fragments: *you will not find them
out’.!14 The verb ‘find out’ (exheuriskó) occurs also in VII (D. 18):
he who does not expect the unexpected will not find it out (cf. VIII,
D. 22, on ‘finding little’ gold). In LXXXIV (D. 27) ‘the unexpected’
will be the fate of men after death. In XLIV (D. 94) the Furies as
ministers of Justice (Diké) ‘will find out’ the Sun, if he oversteps his
measures. In LXXXVII (D. 28B) it is Dike herself who will lay hands
on liars, as in CXXI (D. 66) fire will ‘lay hands on all things’. In these
last three fragments, the notions of finding out and catching hold of
pretty nearly coincide. Thus the usage of this verb elsewhere in
Heraclitus suggests that the limitlessness of the soul is closely con-
nected both with the mystery of death and with notions of cosmic
order and personal punishment for wrongdoing. These suggestions are
too elusive for us to understand or explicate within the present con-
text. The verbal echoes simply mark this as an instance of proleptic
statement, a hint of themes more fully developed elsewhere.
(3) ‘By going (on foot), by travelling over every way.’ It is natural
to think here of ‘the way up and down, one and the same’ mentioned
in CIII (D. 60), and perhaps also of the carding instrument in LXXIV
(D. 59), whose path is ‘straight and crooked’, since the term hodos
(‘way’) appears in each case. But the fragment on the carding wheels
is too problematic to help us here. I see only two plausible readings
for the way travelled in seeking the limits of soul. (1) It can be a very
general image for a search that proceeds in vain: ‘I looked every-
where’. (ii) It can allude to the course of elemental transformation,
with ‘the way down’ of CIII interpreted as a change to water and
earth, ‘the way up’ as a change to fire.!15 The first reading corre-
sponds to the surface meaning of the text; (ii) suggests a cosmic
hyponoia.
(4) Finally, what is the deep /ogos which the soul ‘has’, and which
explains our inability to find its end points? On first reading, logon
echei should mean something like ‘it has something to say’, ‘it has
the right (or the capacity) to speak'.!16 Now the possession of
rational speech may be a significant overtone here, but this idea can-
not explain the adjective ‘deep’.
Most authors have rightly assumed that logos in XXXV must mean
*measure', as in XXXIX (D. 31B). The limitlessness of the psyche is
then to be understood in terms of impenetrable depth. Soundings are
130 Commentary: XXXVI (D. 50)
in vain, for no plummet-line will get to the bottom of it. Cf.
Democritus fr. 117: *we know nothing truly, for truth lies at the
bottom (en bythot). It takes a deep diver to discover it, as Socrates
is supposed to have said about the meaning of Heraclitus’ book.!!”
So for the soul's logos: it is vast, subtle and deep; and intelligence —
not travelling about — is required to find it out.
A logos so profound and limitless can scarcely be distinct from the
universal logos, according to which all things come to pass. The sol-
ution to XXXV thus gives us the fuller explanation for XXVIII (D.
101): by seeking for his own self Heraclitus could find the identity
of the universe, for the /ogos of the soul goes so deep that it coincides
with the /ogos that structures everything in the world. Hence the
error of those men who treat thinking as private, in the face of the
fact that ‘the logos is common’ — common to them and to everything
else (HI, D. 2).
XXXVI
XXXVI (D. 50) Itis wise, listening not to me but to the report (logos), to
agree Sand say? that all things аге one.
It seems likely that this sentence, one of the weightiest of all, came
at the end of the introductory section when Heraclitus returns (by a
kind of ring composition) to the theme of the logos with which he
began. The following points call for comment: (1) the contrast be-
tween ‘listening to me’ and ‘listening to the logos’, (2) the word play
on homologein ‘say in agreement’, (3) the definition of wisdom, and
(4) the final formula ‘all things are one’.
(1) The reference to a logos somehow independent of Heraclitus
will be immediately clear if he has just spoken of the ‘deep logos’ of
the soul. The thought will be: listen not to me but to the discourse
within your soul, and it will tell you all. If we set aside XXXV (D.
45) and consider only I.2 and III (D. 2), listening to the logos will
imply the conception of the world order as a meaningful language
which one hears with more or less comprehension. Heraclitus is after
all a prophétes (‘spokesman’) for the logos: his words are an attempt
to make this larger discourse audible to a few, at least, among the
many who seem deaf.
(2) This thought is developed in homo-logein ‘to agree’, which
carries a phonetic echo of logos and an etymological sense of 'speak-
ing together with, saying the same thing’. Knowing how to listen will
Commentary: XXXVI (D. 50) 131
enable one to speak intelligently (XVII, D. 19), to hold fast to what
is common (XXX, D. 114), by speaking in agreement with the uni-
versal logos of I.2.
(3) Wisdom or what is wise (sophon) consists in just this fitting of
the private to the public, the personal to the universal. (See above on
xynos logos in III.) By its rational structure and its public function in
bringing men into a community, language becomes a symbol for the
unifying structure of the world which wisdom apprehends.
(4) The sentence which began with a paradoxical contrast between
two things that seem identical — listening to Heraclitus and listening
to (his) logos — culminates in a greater paradox of identification: all
things are one. The sense of tension, if not contradiction, is all the
greater because the unity of all things is here the content that wisdom
will put itself in agreement with, whereas in XXVII (D. 108) *what is
wise' is said to be 'set apart from all (things)', pantón kechorismenon.
This tension between the themes of isolation and community will
be fully resolved only in the context of other fragments. (See on LIV,
D. 41 and CXVIII, D. 32.) The unity of opposites and the community
of the logos (with its triple application to discourse, soul, and uni-
verse) provide the initial clues for interpreting this extraordinary
claim, whose full meaning requires an understanding of Heraclitus’
thought as a whole. In that sense, the rest of our commentary will be
an exegesis of this proposition: hen panta einai.
This is the earliest extant statement of systematic monism, and
probably the first such statement ever made in Greece. In textbooks
on the history of philosophy, the Milesian thinkers are represented as
monists who reduce all things to water, to air, or to the Unlimited.
But this view, which ultimately rests upon Aristotle’s interpretation
of their doctrine in terms of his own concept of the material cause in
Metaphysics A 3, is anachronistic and misleading, insofar as it imputes
to the earliest Greek naturalists a post-Parmenidean notion of some
true unity underlying the apparent plurality of things, even when it
does not actually assign to them Aristotle’s own characteristic con-
cept of the underlying material substratum of change (hypoket-
menon).!18 There is no good evidence for assigning monism to the
Milesians, if this is understood as the claim that ‘all things are water’
or ‘all things are air’, that (as Diogenes of Apollonia puts it) earth
and sky and sea and air are not really ‘different in their own physis’
but are at bottom one and the same thing.
But the Milesian philosophers were monists in a different sense,
and their theories must have provided the background for Heraclitus’
132 Commentary: XXXVII (D. 30)
thesis. What he could draw from them was the double claim (i) that
all things are derived from a single arché or starting point, and (ii)
that as now constituted all things are organized within a single world
structure or kosmos. And we may add (iii) that Anaximander surely,
and Anaximenes probably, thought of the initial principle not only as
encompassing (periechein), and thus physically unifying the world, but
also as ‘steering’ and governing it by imposing a rational structure.
Aspects (i) and (ii) of Milesian monism seem to be reflected in
XXXVII (D. 30); the aspect of cosmic guidance (iii) will emerge in
LIV (D. 41).
XXXVII
XXXVII (D. 30) The ordering (kosmos), the same for all, no god nor man has
made, but it ever was and is and will be: fire everliving, kindled in measures and
in measures going out.
This text, with the two that follow (D. 31A and 31B), gives us our
primary information on Heraclitus’ cosmological thought and the
most natural interpretation of his claim that all things are one. But
all three texts are surrounded by thorny problems. What is the
relationship between Heraclitus’ doctrine and the cosmological
theories of his Milesian predecessors? In what sense can a world order
be identified with ‘everliving fire’? And is Heraclitus here denying the
general assumption of a development of the world from some more
primitive source?
I have already indicated my answers to these questions in the
Introduction. Since my position diverges from the dominant trends
in recent scholarship, it will be necessary to support it in some detail.
But before entering the precinct of controversy, I want to sketch a
preliminary reading of XXXVII that does not raise any of these ques-
tions, since it does not presuppose any connection with the doctrines
of the Milesians and their successors but takes the term kosmos in the
context of its early literary usage, without reference to the new,
technical sense of ‘world’ or ‘world order’.!!9 In the fragments as
arranged here, we have had no reference to physical theory (though
there is some hint of this in the repeated occurrence of the term
physis), no mention of the Milesian cosmologists as such (since Thales
was apparently paired with Homer, as Pythagoras, Xenophanes and
Hecataeus are named with Hesiod), and no reference to cosmology.
(The only occurrence so far of the term kosmos is in the dubious
‘fragment’ VI, D. 89.) A reader encountering XXXVII for the first
Commentary: XXXVII (D. 30) 133
time might well begin by taking kosmos in its normal literary sense
of ‘good order’, ‘adornment’, as in the brilliant toilette of a woman
of fashion or in the impressive array of disciplined troops.1?0
A *kosmos, the same for all' may then be understood either as (1)
a moral or political order, applicable to all men, like the ‘divine one’
by which all human laws are nourished in XXX (D. 114); or (2) an
ornament like jewelry, fine clothing, or a work of art. In the long run
this naive reading of XXXVII cannot succeed. But the older, literary
sense of kosmos is a natural starting point, since Heraclitus does not
write in a technical language and the new ‘cosmological’ sense of
kosmos is itself the heir to all these older nuances of the word. The
technical notion of ‘world order’ will emerge only as a hyponoia
brought to the surface by reflection, once it is seen that no good
sense can be made of the idea of ‘an adornment the same for all’;
and if ‘a social order the same for all (men)’ does make sense, it is not
easy to understand how such an order could be identified with eternal
fire. It is the formula for eternity (‘ever was and is and will be’) and
the mention of fire that will force us onto the terrain of natural phil-
osophy.1?!
Before this move to the technical sense of kosmos is required, we
are told that ‘no god nor man has made the kosmos, the same for all’.
Scholars have scratched their heads over this denial that any human
being has made the kosmos (why should anybody suppose that?) and
have generally dismissed these words as a so-called polar expression,
as if ‘neither man nor god’ meant simply ‘no one at all’. But even the
notion that a god has made the world is poorly attested in Greece
before Plato’s Timaeus. The whole problem here is an artificial one,
created by the mistaken assumption (in turn supported by the mis-
taken reading tonde) that kosmos must from the beginning have its
technical sense of ‘world order’. For of course if kosmos means
‘moral (or social) order’, or if it means ‘ornament’, then we naturally
suppose it to be the work of an orderer, whether human or divine.
Thus the sons of Atreus are regularly referred to in the Шаа as
*orderers of the host’ (kosmétore Іабп). On our first, naive reading of
XXXVII we see very clearly what Heraclitus is denying, though we
cannot immediately understand why. We are faced with two para-
doxes: an array that is not local or particular but ‘the same for all’;
and an instance of order without an orderer, like a disciplined host
without a commander, a law without a lawgiver, or a work of art
without an artisan. The first paradox is resolved by a shift to the phil-
osophical sense of kosmos. The world order is naturally ‘common’,
134 Commentary: XXXVII (D. 30)
the same for all men and for all things: that is just what is meant by a
world order. But how can we have an ordered world without a power
to set it in order?
By denying that this order is a work of art, Heraclitus implies that
it is a work of nature: self-made or self-grown. Thus the cosmological
idea begins to emerge, and becomes explicit when the kosmos itself
is invested with the attributes of divinity: ‘it ever was and is and will
be’. This is the thought echoed in a famous fragment of Euripides:
the student of Ionian science (historia) beholds ‘the ageless order
(kosmos) of undying nature (physis)’ (fr. 910 Nauck = DK 59.A 30).
The new philosophical paradox of XXXVII is a denial of any funda-
menta] duality between a generated world order and the eternal
source from which it arises or the ruling intelligence by which it is
organized. Insofar as the kosmos is made, it is self-made; insofar as it
is organized, it is self-organized; insofar as it is generated, it is identical
with its own eternal source, everliving fire.
XXXVII is built up by wave upon wave of paradox. If the initial
problems are resolved by taking kosmos in the sense of ‘world order’
and by the identification of this order with fire, that identification is
itself paradoxical, whether we think of fire as an element within the
world — for in that case the whole is identified with one of its parts
— or whether we think of it as some primordial or transcendent power,
as the emphasis on its eternal being would suggest. (For then the
world is identified with something transmundane!) But the culmi-
nating paradox is provided by the last two participles, when this
principle of cosmic eternity is said to be regularly rekindled and
regularly going out. What sense can we make of an eternal bonfire
going out? And what are the measures according to which it is kindled
and extinguished?
So far I have avoided the shoals of controversy, but that is no
longer possible. For the question of the measures of fire going out is
just the question of whether or not Heraclitus envisaged the world as
gradually taking shape from (and eventually reabsorbed into) primor-
dial fire, as the Stoics did after him and in his name. And this double
question — the issues of cosmogony and cosmic conflagration, which
hang together — stands at the storm center of scholarly dispute. If
the Stoics were not actually following Heraclitus, they were certainly
following the view indicated by Aristotle and presented in detail by
Theophrastus: *The kosmos is generated from fire and is ignited again
according to certain periods alternating through all eternity' (D.L.
ІХ.8 = DK 22.A1; see Appendix ПА). Theophrastus’ account was
Commentary: XXXVII (D. 30) 135
accepted in antiquity by all later writers, and by Zeller, Diels, and
most modern scholars (though not by Burnet) until the publication
of Reinhardt's book on Parmenides in 1916. Since then the tide has
turned, and I find myself almost alone today in suggesting that, after
all, Theophrastus and the Stoics understood Heraclitus correctly on
this point. Although a strong basis was laid by Burnet's presentation
of the case, the great success of Reinhardt's argument is due to a new
and important insight: not only do the extant fragments not present
any detailed statement of cosmogony, but there is good reason to
doubt that any lost fragments were more explicit. The doxography of
Theophrastus, and the Stoic interpretation that is built upon it, show
every sign of relying precisely upon those fragments whose original
text has been preserved. So the ancient interpretation has no inde-
pendent authority.1?? On this point modern scholarship is unanimous.
Whatever interpretation we offer must be based upon Heraclitus'
words alone, together with whatever we can know of their historical
context.
Once this point has been admitted, I believe that the recent denial
of cosmogony for Heraclitus will turn out to be a temporary over-
reaction, an exaggerated by-product of our emancipation from the
authority of the Stoic and doxographical interpretations. If we read
Heraclitus! words with an ear for their rich allusiveness, we will find
that they do not contain a dogmatic denial of cosmogony any more
than they contain a full statement of that process. On the contrary,
we will find that XXXVII and a dozen other texts are best understood
as presupposing rather than as denying a genetic account of the order
of nature, and as playing fruitfully with the notion that the world will
one day go up in smoke. On this point — the primary or pre-eminent
sense of *kindled in measures and in measures going out' — the Stoics
did not misunderstand Heraclitus; they distorted his cosmic specu-
lation only by transforming a subtle, poetic vision of the cosmic pro-
cess into a rigid orthodoxy.
This argument will be pursued in the next sections of the com-
mentary. But I do not share the common view that the question of
cosmogony and ecpyrosis is decisive for the understanding of
Heraclitus. If we eliminate this cycle of world formation and destruc-
tion from his system, the vision of nature will be lacking in complete-
ness and in symmetry, but it will still be essentially the same vision.
For the pattern of natural law is the same for macrocosm and for
microcosm, for the origins of heaven and earth and their present pat-
tern of transformation: 'kindled in measures and in measures going
136 Commentary: XXXVII (D. 30)
out' applies to all of these. The great cosmic cycle is only the
ordinary cycle of natural change and human life writ large. What is
crucial is not the debate about a particular doctrine but the recog-
nition of the kind of discourse which Heraclitus presents, and which
separates him from the natural philosophers like Anaxagoras and
Diogenes. This is what Theophrastus and (to a lesser extent) the
Stoics failed to understand, and what Heraclitus himself realized was
so difficult to express. Once we understand his ironical self-distancing
from technical cosmology, and his reinterpretation of all other con-
ceptions in terms of an understanding of human life and death, his
lofty acceptance-but-also-denial of a cosmic cycle will appear as a
natural consequence of his general attitude to Ionian physics.
Before returning to the exegesis of XXXVII, I want to repeat one
very general argument against the currently predominant view, which
holds that by saying the kosmos 'forever was and is and will be, ever-
living fire' Heraclitus meant literally and unambiguously to deny that
the world had emerged from some earlier and simpler state of
affairs.1?5 It seems that little thought has been given to how strange,
almost unintelligible, would be the dogmatic rejection of cosmo-
genesis by an archaic thinker. The instinct to explain things by telling
how they began and how they developed is not only at the basis of
all mythic thought; it also dominates all scientific or philosophic
speculation down to and including Plato's Timaeus. ‘The principle of
cosmogony was rejected by no one before Aristotle, not even by
Parmenides, and it has perhaps been rejected by no one since, except
under Aristotelian influence. The scientists who write on *'the birth
of the solar system" are only giving us the latest version of the cre-
ation story.'1?* Aristotle alone broke with this millenial tradition,
and he had a strong motive for doing so. He had abandoned Plato's
realm of imperishable Forms but not Plato's belief that scientific
knowledge requires a fixed and unchanging object. Hence it was
of the greatest importance for him to find an equivalent pattern of
eternal stability within the structure of the natural world. What is
lacking in the case of Heraclitus is any comparable philosophical
motive for espousing such a rare and radical heresy, more than a cen-
tury before Plato's Timaeus.
To return to the identification of kosmos and fire: what does this
mean, and why has Heraclitus chosen fire? As indicated in the Intro-
duction, the nearly contemporary theory of Anaximenes provides
the historical background against which Heraclitus' own cosmo-
logical monism is to be understood.1?5 Our best account of the doc-
Commentary: XXXVII (D. 30) 137
trine of Anaximenes comes from Theophrastus, and it seems to con-
tain a fairly close paraphrase of Anaximenes' own words:
He said that the first principle was limitless Air (aër), from which
arises what comes into being, what has become, and what will be,
and gods and things divine; but other things arise from its off-
spring. The form of the air is as follows: when it is most uniform
it is invisible [sc. as atmospheric air] ; but it is made manifest by
cold and heat and moisture and motion. It moves continually; for
it would not change as much as it does if it were not in motion. As
it thickens or rarefies it appears as different. For when it spreads
out into rarer form it becomes fire; winds on the other hand are air
as it thickens; from air cloud is produced by compression; and
water by still more compression; when further thickened it be-
comes earth and in its thickest form stones. (Theophrastus in the
excerpt of Hippolytus, DK 13.A 7)
The rest of the doxography, and parallels from Anaximander and
from Anaxagoras (especially frs. 15 and 16), make clear that this
sixth-century monism must be understood in the context of a cos-
mogony: if the boundless Air is taken as arché or starting point, that
is just because Anaximenes believes he can explain how, beginning
with the nature of air alone, the whole diversity of the world and its
structure has evolved, by thickening and thinning in connection with
cooling and heating. In this way all things arise from the Air — either
directly or ‘from its offspring’, as the doxography reports.126
This genealogical derivation of the world from a single ancestor
adapts a pattern that is as old as Hesiod's Theogony and will remain
standard in the tradition of natural philosophy down to Plato's
Timaeus (where the Demiurge is called ‘father’ of the created world
at 37C7, but the Forms are father at 50D3, where the Receptacle is
mother and the world of becoming is itself ‘offspring’, engonos). In
XXXVIII and XXXIX (D. 31A—B) Heraclitus will exploit some
aspects of this pattern — and again in LXXXIII (D. 53), where War
is called ‘father of all things’. But in XXXVII he directly rejects this
pattern by insisting upon the eternal pre-existence of the world order
as everliving fire.!27 This break with the Milesian scheme has the
effect of identifying the world with its eternal source or arche, the
cosmic order with its divine helmsman or regulator. This is monism
with a vengeance. But why is it fire that is selected to represent the
‘one’?
A recent writer on the history of science has spoken of ‘the air of
magic that boils out of the fire: the alchemical feeling that substances
138 Commentary: XXXVIII- XXXIX (D. 31)
can be changed in unpredictable ways. This is the numinous quality
that seems to make fire a source of life and a living thing to carry us
into a hidden underworld within the material world.’!28 Fire is
indeed a mysterious symbol of life, of superhuman life — despite or
because of the fact that it is the one element in which no animal can
live, and a power that in ancient Greece (as in modern India) often
served to receive human bodies at death. Thus in representing life
and creativity it also represents death and destruction. As an altar
flame consuming the sacrifice, it represents the gods. As fire for
cooking and for warmth in winter it sustains human life. As instru-
ment of the arts, the stolen gift of Prometheus, it points to the divine
element in human activity, the techniques and industry that separate
us from the animals. Fire has many qualities. But it is a most unlikely
choice for a starting point in a literal account of the development of
the world in material terms, since it is not itself a kind of matter, not
a body at all, but a process of transition from one state to another, a
symbol of life and death at once, the very element of paradox.
These are some of the thoughts which Heraclitus’ choice of fire
has imposed upon the pattern of cosmic transformation taken over
from Anaximander and Anaximenes. He takes a physical theory as
the background against which his words are to be understood (once
we have been led to interpret kosmos as ‘world order’); but his
utterance is not itself the statement of a physical theory. Instead, the
paradoxical denial that the kosmos has any origin or history at all is
redoubled by the description of an everliving fire that is always going
out. The error of recent interpreters has been to deprive this second
paradox of its sting by refusing to take the words literally, reading
them as a poetic reference to elemental transformations, while con-
struing the first paradox as a literal statement of doctrine. If we take
both statements at face value they indicate that the everliving fire
could equally well be described as ever dying, that it is wholly transi-
tory and always changing, while remaining eternally the same for all.
In order to unravel these puzzles, we must know more about the
measures by which fire is kindled and put out. One clue is provided
in the ‘turnings’ of fire and the measures of sea in XXXVIII-XXXIX;
another will be found in the measures of the sun in XLIV (D. 94).
XXXVITI-XXXIX
XXXVIII (D. 31A) The reversals (tropai) of fire: first sea; but of sea half is
earth, half lightning storm (préster).
Commentary: XXXVIII-XXXIX (D. 31) 139
XXXIX (D. 31B) Sea pours out Xfrom earth>, and it measures up to the same
amount (logos) as it was before becoming earth. 12
Clement, the only author to cite these two texts, suggests that the
first follows closely on XXXVII (D. 30). His citation is compatible
with there being no gap between XXXVIII and XXXIX, and many
editors treat these as a single fragment. Reinhardt wished to regard
all three sentences (XXXVII—XXXIX, D. 30—1) as one continuous
text, 130
If one reads XXXVIII—XXXIX without preconception, but with
some knowledge of Ionian natural philosophy, they suggest a cosmo-
gonic development of sea from fire and earth from sea: the very pat-
tern illustrated in the doxography for Anaximenes (above, p. 137)
but with Fire in the place of Air. It is just like Heraclitus, after deny-
ing that the world order has proceeded from anything else, to turn in
the opposite direction and generate the world as if his everliving fire
was an ordinary Milesian arché. This reflects the fact that his own
cosmology both is and is not a substitute for the theories of the
natural philosophers.
Given what we know about cosmogenesis in the Milesians and
Anaxagoras, it takes a certain amount of hermeneutical bias, not to
say obstinacy, to read ‘first’ and ‘before’ in XXXVIII-XXXIX as if
the words did not refer to a temporal sequence. The fact that Theo-
phrastus and all later writers, including the Stoics, took them to
imply a cosmogony is not in itself a sufficient reason for us to refuse
to do so.1?! If recent interpreters have resisted the temptation to
recognize some kind of temporal sequence or cycle in XXXVIII—
XXXIX, that is because they believed cosmogony was excluded by
Heraclitus in XXXVII (D. 30). Once we have decided to accept
Heraclitus! words in all their diverse, even contradictory suggestive-
ness, there is no reason to doubt that the two sentences on fire, sea,
and earth are intended to suggest some process of world formation or
transformation, such as we find in the doxography for Anaximenes
and frs. 15—16 of Anaxagoras. 32
Heraclitus does not present us with a prosaic account of how the
world took shape. The mysterious occurrence of préstér here — a
lightning storm where we expect an element or a cosmic mass — and
the enigmatic reference to sea ‘pouring out’ and ‘being measured’
show that he has in mind something rather different from the ordi-
nary Ionian cosmogony. Yet he is clearly playing here with that
cosmogonic pattern, just as in the doctrine of fire in XXXVII he is
140 | Commentary: XXXVIII-XXXIX (D. 31)
playing with the Milesian notion of an elemental arché. The assump-
tion of a temporal sequence is obvious in every phrase of these two
sentences, and first of all in the term tropa: ‘reversals’.
In normal literary usage, from Homer to Herodotus, tropé has two
senses: (1) a rout in battle, when an army turns and runs, and (2) the
‘turnings’ of the sun at solstice, i.e. the extreme points of sunrise and
sunset towards the north in summer and the south in winter, or (2A)
the two times of year (in June and December) when the sun reaches
these points and begins its movement back in the opposite direction.
It is to render both senses that I translate tropa: as ‘reversals’.!33
Since ‘the routs of (everliving) fire’ is not immediately intelligible,
the prima facie reading of pyros tropai must rely on (2): *the turning-
points of fire’, i.e. the extreme points in a periodic movement from
something like summer to something like winter.!5* What Heraclitus’
words imply is a direct parallel, in poetic terms an identification,
between fire and sun. This gives us the clue without which the riddles
of XXXVII-XXXIX would remain unintelligible. The measures by
which fire is kindled and put out are to be understood as in some
sense a re-enactment of the sun's regular course from solstice to
solstice. And this link between the annual movements of the sun and
the measured death and revival of fire is reaffirmed in the reference
in XLIV (D. 94) to the ‘measures’ of the sun's path as a manifestation
of the divine order of the cosmos.
For the sun the tropa: are the limits in an annual oscillation, mark-
ing the seasons of the year. By analogy the tropa: of fire will not be
stages in a graduated sequence but extreme points in some kind of
oscillation. This explains why the first ‘turning’ of fire is not cloud,
wind, smoke, or some other item from the atmosphere, as the pattern
of Ionian cosmogony would lead us to expect, but sea: the visible
mass of water, and thus the opposite of fire, the element that serves
precisely to put it out. Sea marks the first tropé of fire not because
fire ‘turns into’ water by any conceivable physical change, but because
water stands at the opposite pole, the extreme ‘reversal’ which con-
trasts with fire as winter contrasts with summer, or night with day.
In the last analysis, fire and sea are ‘one’, just as these other opposites
are one. But in a more obvious sense, sea represents the death and
defeat of fire. Thus the dominant literary meaning of tropa: as ‘routs
in battle’, which we rejected on first reading, emerges after all as a
һуропота.
Such linguistic clues were not understood by the Stoic commen-
tator followed by Clement, who, like Theophrastus and most moderns,
Commentary: XXXVIII-XXXIX (D. 31) 141
misread tropa: in the light of Aristotle's use of the verb trepesthai for
*transformations' and hence must provide some middle term by which
fire can ‘turn into’ sea: ‘he means that fire .. . is turned through air
into moisture, as seed or semen for the world formation, which he
calls **sea".155 It was left for the moderns to take tropa: as ‘transform-
ations’ and at the same time refuse to allow a middle term between
fire and water, sun and sea, thus crediting Heraclitus with the strange
theory of an elementary transformation from fire to water, and an
equally surprising scheme of ‘elements’ in which the atmosphere —
the aér of Anaximenes — is not even represented! Heraclitus’ system-
atic omission of the term aér may well be intentional — something
like a deliberate snub. But he cannot have offered a theory of the
natural world in which the atmosphere was omitted.
If we stick to the text we do not get ensnared in such strange doc-
trines. After the first reversal of fire as sea we have the reversal of sea
(and the second reversal of fire) as ‘half earth, half préstér’. That is,
the turning from sea to its opposite takes two equal forms, in turn
opposed to one another. The shift from wet to dry, liquid to solid,
results in dry land or earth. Here we establish contact with the tra-
ditional pattern of cosmogony, in which the emergence of dry land
from primeval moisture or sea is a recognized phase.1?6 But if for a
moment Heraclitus touches base here in standard cosmology, it is
only to bound off again in his own direction with the next words.
The other turning from sea is back in the initial direction of fire, and
what we expect at this point is some representative of the aér or
atmosphere, the product of evaporation from the sea which
accompanies its drying up. If Heraclitus had been propounding a
physical theory he might have written: ‘The reversals of sea (or the
reversals of fire starting from sea) means that part of the sea moves in
the dry (and cold) direction, further away from its starting point in
fire, and becomes earth; part moves back towards fire and warmth
and becomes atmospheric vapor, clouds, and wind, thus filling the
region between earth and celestial fire, and providing nourishment
for the fires aloft.” Something of this sort must be what Heraclitus is
alluding to, the theory of Anaximenes or some variant on 11.1357 But
instead of giving any systematic account of the atmosphere, Heraclitus
invokes the prester.
The identity of this phenomenon is not beyond dispute. Several
recent studies have interpreted the préstér as a tornado or water-
spout. But the Greek literary evidence emphasizes a connection with
fire from heaven, as in a lightning storm. The word first appears in
142 Commentary: XXXVIII-XXXIX (D. 31)
Hesiod's Theogony as an attribute of winds (préstéres anemoi)
between the mention of lightning and thunderbolt, as an instance of
celestial flame.!38 Like Aristophanes and Hesiod, Aristotle associates
the préstér with a whirlwind or tornado, but his brief description does
not mention a spiral form. He says that préstér is the name given to a
hot or rarified wind drawn down from the clouds, that catches fire:
‘for it sets the air on fire (synekpimprést) and colors it by its confla-
gration’ (Meteor. ПІ.1, 371a 15—17). Aristotle thus explains the
name by a derivation from pimprémi ‘burn, set on fire'.159 In Xeno-
phon a préstér is cited as setting a temple on fire (Historia Graeca
1.3.1). It must then have involved a lightning storm, like the one
Aristotle describes as destroying the temple of Artemis at Ephesus
with sheets of fire (Meteor. 371a 31ff.). When Herodotus speaks of
losses to Xerxes’ army caused by ‘thunder (brontaz) and préstéres at
night' (VII.42.2), he must be referring to a similar storm. Thus the
half-dozen mentions of préstéres in extant Greek literature from
Hesiod to Aristotle all point to destructive fire from the sky in a
great wind storm, perhaps of hurricane force, but not to a tornado or
whirlwind.!49 This sense of préstér as something like sheet lightning
is what Heraclitus must have in mind in XXXVIIL. It represents fire
in the atmosphere, but not a visible return from sea to sky. For ina
thunderstorm the bolts of lightning come dramatically down. And
the ancient texts regularly speak of préstéres as ‘falling’ (empesontos
in Xenophon; epespiptousi in Herodotus; kataspomenon in Aristotle,
etc.).
Of course if Heraclitus were referring to ‘a waterspout attended
with lightning’ (as LSJ renders Burnet's suggestion of a ‘fiery water-
spout’), then the movement from sea to sky would be vividly
exemplified. For in the case of the waterspout a funnel of cloud
descends towards the sea and seems to suck the sea up into the
sky.1*! Unfortunately, the Greek literary evidence down to the time
of Aristotle and Theophrastus (and perhaps beyond) does not point
to any necessary or even normal connection between a préstér and a
waterspout, of the sort we find in Lucretius. So this interpretation of
Heraclitus’ words is quite unsupported.
On any reasonable interpretation, a préstér is not an element or a
cosmic mass, but a devastating discharge of fire from storm clouds: it
illustrates the power of cosmic fire as a visual experience. Compare
the thunderbolt of Zeus, the keraunos which ‘steers all things’ in
CXIX (D. 64).!42 Perhaps there was some connection in Greek experi-
ence between the préstér and the solstitial seasons. But it seems more
Commentary: XXXVIII-XXXIX (D. 31) 143
likely that Heraclitus chose the préstér as a phenomenon that
explodes out of season, not a predictable ‘turning’ but an expression
of the power of opposition, manifesting itself as everliving fire.
On this view, préstér represents half the sea and infinite power. But
on any view these *measures' seem puzzling. How can one strike a
balance between a momentary event like the préstér and the stable
mass of earth?!43 And what will be left of the sea if half changes into
earth and half into atmospheric fire? This is a problem for any view
that takes tropai in XXXVII as transformations, and at the same time
insists on regarding the half-and-half measures synchronically, as a
ratio between constituents of the world at any given moment.
The most plausible among recent interpretations is that of Kirk.
*Naturally Heraclitus means that one-half of sea can be regarded as
turning to earth (and replenished by earth), and the other half as
turning to préstér (and replenished by fire); the total remains un-
changed as ѕеа.’!44 The assumptions underlying this view (which are
widely shared), namely, that the measures of XXXVII—XL are to be
understood in terms of simultaneous relationships rather than
successive phases, will be examined later. Here I remark only that
such a view takes no account of the literal sense of tropa? and the
implied analogy to the course of the sun; that it involves reading a
great deal between the lines of XXXVIII; and that it is prima facie
incompatible with the text of XXXIX (D. 31B), which refers to two
distinct temporal stages: before and after the sea becomes earth.
I suggest, therefore, that we understand ‘half earth, half préstér’ as
an enigmatic reference to long-term tendencies in two opposite
directions after the production of sea, a reversal that will eventually
destroy the sea by drying and evaporation; the vapors themselves are
to be thought of as nourishing celestial fire, in the form of sun, star,
and lightning. *Half-and-half' points (a) to the dual production of
earth and atmospheric vapor from the sea, and (b) to the fact that
the whole cosmic process unfolds according to rigorous measure and
symmetry. This is guess-work; but it is guess-work grounded in the
text and in the evidence for early Ionian cosmology.
In the measurement of sea in XXXIX we have a clear statement of
(b) and a partial statement of (a): ‘sea becomes earth’. But what does
it mean to say that ‘sea pours out’ or ‘dissolves’ (diacheetat)? The last
words of XXXIX show that a prior change of sea into earth is pre-
supposed. (Perhaps this is to be understood from ‘of sea, half is
earth’ in XXXVIII; or perhaps something is missing between the two
fragments.) Hence there is no need to insert the word ‘earth’ (gé) as
144 Commentary: XXXVIII-XXXIX (D. 31)
subject of ‘pours out’ (diacheeta?), as many editors do. With or with-
out this textual change we have a new shift of direction, the re-
liquefaction of earth as sea, reversing the emergence of dry land.
Now there is some parallel to this іп Ionian cosmology.1*5 Herac-
litus himself says in CII (D. 36) that ‘out of earth water is born’, and
implies that this compensates for the generation of earth which is
‘death for water’. In СП we have a process of elemental transformation
within the present world order. On my reading of XXXIX, this ordi-
nary cycle of elemental change is an imitation of, or an analogue to,
the larger cosmic cycle of formation and reformation of land and sea
in XXXVIII and XXXIX. (On the usual reading these two cycles are
identical, since the cosmic cycle of XXXVIII—XXXIX is reduced to
the elemental exchanges of CII, D. 36.) It would be idle to pretend
to a definitive interpretation of such a cryptic text. We cannot tell
whether 'sea becoming earth' refers to the well-known Mediterranean
phenomena of sinking and rising coastlines — either from deep geo-
logical causes (the so-called bradyseism, the slow movement up or
down of the earth's crust) or from the silting up of river mouths, as
at Ephesus and Miletus — or whether Heraclitus is alluding here to
some greater cosmic changes leading up to general conflagration, as
Clement says. It may well be that he intends XXXIX to apply
ambiguously to both: to visible changes in the relationship between
earth and sea and also to the vaster cyclical changes of the cosmos.
Such reversals are conceived as a measured pendulum swing, as.in
Anaximander's thought of retribution paid ‘according to the ordinance
of Time’. In emphasizing the equality of exchanges Heraclitus intro-
duces the notion of cosmic order as a pattern of Justice, in which
nothing is taken without repayment. (Cf. XL, D. 90 and LXXXII, D.
80.)
The principle of measure, mentioned enigmatically at the end of
XXXVII (D. 30), is now clarified as a measure preserved over a
sequence of stages, in a temporal progression that returns us to the
status quo ante.1*9 The measures of equality are thus rigorously
respected over the long run, no matter how dramatic the reversals
may be at any given moment. And since this regularity is expressed
by the term /ogos in XXXIX, it is thematically connected with the
logos of 1.2, ‘in accordance with which all things come to pass’.
Commentary: XL (D. 90) 145
XL
XL(D.90) All things are requital for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for
gold and gold for goods.
By its echo of XXXVII the mention of fire suggests a cosmic appli-
cation, which is confirmed by the reference to ‘all things’. Heraclitus
is again playing with the pattern of Ionian cosmology and the element
theory of Anaximenes. But the substitution of fire for air does not
leave the rest of the theory as it was. Fire represents a process of
destruction, and only in this sense can one imagine everything ‘turn-
ing to fire’. In return, the only thing that naturally arises from fire is
smoke and ashes. If fire is chosen as a model for physical transform-
ation, to replace the Milesian model of evaporation and condensation,
it will intuitively prefigure the annihilation of nature, the devastation
of the world order, as fire in warfare prefigures the burning of the
ships, the destruction of the crops and fruit trees, the sack and pillage
of a town. This only makes it more paradoxical that fire in XXXVII
should represent a world order that is eternal.
Hence I believe the Stoics (and other ancient readers before them)
must have been right to think that the imagery of fire for Heraclitus
presages some cosmic conflagration or ecpyrosis. And they were right
too to think that, in this dimension, the eternity of the kosmos can
only consist in the recurrence of the same phases, the eternal rep-
etition of cosmic ‘reversals’ between opposites, whether as oscil-
lations between fire and flood, in the polar catastrophes of Great
Summer and Great Winter, or between Fire itself and the world order,
as in the Stoic cycle.!1*? I doubt that Heraclitus had much more to
say about the details of this world cycle than what we read in
XXXVII-—XXXIX. (But see below on XLII and XLIII.) He was con-
tent to suggest a cycle in which fire occupies a dominant position at
the end as at the beginning; for in a circle the two coincide (XCIX,
D. 103). So much followed from the notions of cosmic symmetry he
had accepted from the Milesians (and which he may have applied even
more rigorously than they did) once he had chosen fire as his start-
ing point. The vicissitudes of the cycle will then appear as the ever-
recurring extinction and rekindling of the eternal flame.
Heraclitus’ cosmic cycle was probably a development from
Milesian views; it exerted in turn a decisive influence on Empedocles
and, later, on the Stoics.!48 Unlike these philosophers, Heraclitus
was interested not in propounding but in using physical theories to
146 Commentary: XL (D. 90)
project a vision of cosmic order and an understanding of human life
and death. That is why the question whether or not Heraclitus
envisaged a world conflagration, although a great subject of scholarly
debate, is not a crucial issue in understanding his thought. (The best
of all modern interpreters of Heraclitus, Karl Reinhardt, was in my
view passionately mistaken on this very question.) But it is crucial
for giving a natural sense to the text of XL.
If we attend to the words and imagery of XL, three points emerge.
(1) Fire possesses a unique and universal value, like gold in a land
that has never heard of silver. The imagery of gold suggests the gift of
princes and exceptional offerings to the gods.!49 The essential point
is that fire is worth ‘all the rest’ (ta panta). This is an echo, and an
interpretation, of the unity of ‘all things’ in XXXVI (D. 50). It estab-
lishes a parallel to the sun, who is worth all the other stars (XLVI, D.
99), to the outstanding man of LXIII (D. 49: ‘one is ten thousand, if
he is the best’), and above all to the aim of superior men (XCVII, D.
29) who choose everlasting fame: ‘one thing in exchange for all’.
(2) The polar movement between ‘fire, all things’ and ‘all things,
fire' finds a parallel in CXXIV (D. 10): *from all things one and from
one thing all’. The primary application must be to the cosmic cycle
that leads from primordial fire to the creation of sea and land and all
things — and back again. But this does not exclude the implication
that similar exchanges between cosmic fire and other things — the
elements, or the cosmic masses — are going on all the time. (The pat-
tern of Ionian cosmogony is designed to serve as a paradigm for
understanding the world as it is.) The universal exchange for fire is,
in one sense, a fact of human experience: we see all sorts of things
going up in flames. But the reverse process, the generation of all
things from fire, is not a fact of observation at all. It is a pure require-
ment of theory, a consequence of the principle of symmetry. In this
respect Heraclitus' doctrine is equally dogmatic, equally devoid of
empirical support, whether it is taken as a claim about continuing
processes of nature or as a thesis about cosmogony. If anything, the
cosmogonic thesis has an epistemological advantage over the doctrine
of a continuous emergence of all things from fire, since at least the
former cannot be falsified by empirical observation, as the latter
clearly seems to be.
(3) The exchange between fire and all things is expressed by the
term ‘requital’ (antamoibé) which suggests some principle of com-
pensation or retribution: antamoibé may imply reward or punishment,
ot both at once. The term is perhaps an echo of Anaximander's phrase
Excursus I: The cosmic cycle 147
about elemental principles ‘paying the penalty and making retribution
to one another'. Now the alternating aggression and punishment of
opposites in Anaximander seems to be a continuous process going on
within the world, at present, but a pattern realized ‘according to the
ordering of time’, that is, in a sequence or cycle. There is no need to
suppose that Heraclitus is referring only to one cycle, from fire to
world and back again. Like Anaximander, he has in mind all possible
cycles that illustrate a ‘reversal’ between poles: day and night, sum-
mer and winter, rain and dry weather, youth and old age, life and
death. But if the reciprocal exchange between fire and all things is
taken as a paradigm for such cycles, as fire itself is taken as a paradigm
for the world order in XXXVII (D. 30), then the most natural inter-
pretation of this paradigm — and the primary interpretation of cos-
mic fire going out and being rekindled in XXXVII — is a pattern of
cosmogonic emergence of all things from fire balanced by a similar
process in reverse, of the sort sketched in XXXVIII-XXXIX.
Excursus I: On traditional interpretations of the cosmic cycle
Since my interpretation of XXXVII—XL flies in the face of dominant trends in
recent scholarship on Heraclitus, 1 shall here review three of the most influential
interpretations, beginning with that of Zeller. My aim is not to evaluate these
interpretations as a whole but to examine the assumptions on which they are
based, in particular the insistence upon understanding Heraclitus' pattern of cos-
mic order in terms of synchronic (simultaneous) rather than diachronic (periodic)
structure. The reader who is not interested in the history of Heraclitean scholar-
ship may skip ahead to the discussion of the next fragment on p. 153.
For Zeller, the fundamental principle of Heraclitus’ thought is the doctrine of
universal flux, the continuous change and transformation of all things. This doc-
trine Zeller found of course in Aristotle, in the doxography, and above all in
Plato's account. But he also found it in the fragments on the river (L—LI, D. 12
and D. 91), in the assertion of the unity of day and night (XIX, D. 57), the inter-
change of living and dead, sleeping and waking, young and old (XCIII, D. 88),
and in other texts.150 Zeller understood this doctrine as an explicitly meta-
physical thesis, the derivation of all phenomenal things as transitory appearances
of a single entity, *which engenders them all and takes them all back into itself,
and which is the only thing to remain and preserve itself in restless change' (p.
796). From this metaphysical principle Heraclitus derived his physical doctrine
that everything is fire by a kind of imaginative intuition, perceiving fire as the
natural expression of motion and life (p. 809). Fire for Heraclitus is not an
immutable substance or element but the being which is continually undergoing
change, passing into all material entities, penetrating all parts of the universe and
taking on a different form in each. It is not simply visible fire but heat in general
and dry exhalation (anathy miasis) in particular (pp. 814f.); not simply phenom-
enal fire but cosmic fire, Urfeuer, the universal being which forms both the
source and the substance of all things (pp. 817—19).151
It is in this connection that Zeller interprets XL: ‘all things are exchanged for
fire, and fire for all things' (p. 819); he understands this as a derivation of all
148 Excursus I: The cosmic cycle
things from a single principle or Urstoff, without reference to cosmogony or to
any other temporal process. If he nevertheless ascribes a cosmogony to Heraclitus,
it is on the basis of XXXVIII (D. 31A) alone, with its mention of the tropai or
‘turnings’ of fire to sea, earth, and préstér. Schleiermacher and others had taken
this as a reference to the cycle of transformations of elements within the present
world order; if Zeller feels obliged to reject that interpretation it is not because
of anything he finds in the text of Heraclitus, but solely because ‘we have no
reason to mistrust the assertion of Clement, according to whom the fragment
referred to the formation of the world’ (p. 847, n. 2). Zeller is a good enough
historian to eliminate the more obviously Stoic features of Clement's commen-
tary, but he follows that commentary in taking tropai to mean ‘transformations’.
Hence he reads XXXVIII as saying that primordial Fire first changes into water
or ‘sea’, from which in turn arises the solid earth and the hot and fleeting préstér
(Glutwind, flaming wind). In treating XXXIX (D. 31B), Zeller again follows
Clement in seeing the return of earth to sea as the first stage of the reverse pro-
cess that leads to the conflagration (p. 865 with n. 3). As for this final stage, he
finds it directly asserted in CXXI (D. 66) ‘the fire coming on will judge all things’,
and notes that it is fully confirmed by statements in Aristotle and all later
authors.152 But neither cosmogony nor conflagration is central in Zeller's
account. The basic physical doctrine is the cycle of elemental transformations
within the present world order, a cycle which he finds in XL and again in the
statement about the upward and downward path: the closer any body approaches
to the fiery condition, the higher it rises; the farther it departs from this con-
dition, the lower it sinks. But the transformation moves in a circle, since once
the material reaches the condition of earth, at the farthest remove from its
original state, it turns back through the intermediate stages and returns to its
fiery starting point (pp. 854f.).
The first remarkable feature in Zeller's interpretation is the central role he
assigns to the doctrine of flux, understood as a physical cycle of elemental trans-
formation. (Here Zeller follows Plato's account at Timaeus 49Bff. — as many
others have done in assigning an elemental cycle to Heraclitus. The evidence for
such a cycle in the fragments is, in effect, limited to CII, D. 36, unless one
accepts the authenticity of XLI, D. 76.) The other remarkable feature is the
extent to which his argument for cosmogony and ecpyrosis depends upon the
authority of Clement, Aristotle, and other secondary sources. If XXXVIII—
XXXIX are interpreted by him in this light, it is because *we have no reason to
mistrust Clement', and not because of any close analysis of the text and its
pre-Socratic parallels, as has been attempted here. The only other fragment he
cites in support of ecpyrosis is the judgment of all things by fire in CXXI (D. 66).
If the authenticity of CXXI can be called into question, if the authority of
Clement, Aristotle and the doxography can be successfully challenged, and if the
text of these two or three fragments can be shown to bear another sense, Zeller's
whole case for cosmogony and ecpyrosis must collapse.
This sapping operation will be the work of Burnet, completed by Reinhardt.
Burnet starts from a different fundamental insight: not the doctrine of flux but
the unity of opposites. 'The truth hitherto ignored [sc. by Heraclitus' prede-
cessors] is that the many apparently independent and conflicting things we know
are really one, and that, on the other hand, this one is also many. The “‘strife of
opposites” is really an “attunement” (harmonia) ... Wisdom is... a perception
of the underlying unity of the warring opposites' (Burnet, p. 143). This leads
Heraclitus ‘to seek out a new primary substance’. His principle of fire ‘was some-
thing on the same level as the “Air” of Anaximenes’, but chosen to represent a
certain view of unity and stability within a process of constant change. ‘The
Excursus I: The cosmic cycle 149
quantity of fire in a flame burning steadily seems to remain the same, the flame
seems to be what we call a “thing”. And yet the substance of it is continually
changing. It is always passing away in smoke, and its place is always being taken
by fresh matter from the fuel that feeds 112153 Thus Burnet returns to Zeller's
own starting point but from a different point of view: the essential feature of
the process of transformation is that the structure and pattern of things remains
constant. ‘How is it that, in spite of this constant flux, things appear relatively
stable? The answer of Herakleitos was that it is owing to the observance of the
"measures", in virtue of which the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in the
long run remains the same, though its substance is constantly changing’ (p. 150).
In this connection Burnet cites the measures according to which everliving fire is
kindled and extinguished (XXXVII, D. 30), the exchange of all things for fire
and fire for all things (XL, D. 90), and the measures which the sun will not
exceed (XLIV, D. 94).
Before turning to Burnet's attack on cosmogony and ecpyrosis, I must point
out that, despite his illuminating account of the symbolism of fire and river in
terms of a structured pattern of change rather than a metaphysical unity ‘behind’
or ‘underneath’ the appearances, his version of the doctrine of measures cannot
easily be accommodated to Heraclitus' text. In trying to make sense of the
extinction and rekindling of an everliving fire, a reference to 'the aggregate bulk
of each form of matter in the long run' does not appear, at first sight, to offer a
plausible solution. (If Burnet's version has come to seem natural, that is only
because it has been repeated by so many interpreters, beginning with Reinhardt.)
And the measures which the sun will not overstep must mark its path in the sky,
charted daily or over the course of a year. Only in the logos by which sea is
measured in XXXIX (D. 31B) do we have any reference to the bulk of some
form of matter, but the equality there is explicitly said to be not constantly
maintained but restored to what it was at some previous time (before it became
earth, according to the text accepted by Burnet himself). In both cases, then,
where the meaning is clear, the measures represent a symmetry or equality main-
tained by a periodic recurrence. Here the temporal dimension is not negligible —
as it may be when one talks of things ‘remaining the same in the long run’ — but
essential: for Heraclitus as for Anaximander the measures of justice are recog-
nizable only as ‘an ordering of time’. And a diachronic interpretation for the first
case also, that is, for the measures by which cosmic fire is put out and rekindled,
is suggested not only by the parallel between fire and sun introduced with the
term tropai, but also by the common-sense observation that a fire is not ordi-
narily kindled and extinguished at the same time.
The three passages just discussed are the only ones in which the terms metra
or metreisthai (‘measures’, ‘to measure’) occur, but there are several in which
logos may convey this sense. Thus we have two statements referring to the logos
of the soul, first of all in XXXV (D. 45): one cannot find the ‘limits of psyche’
because it has such a deep logos. And there is also the somewhat dubious frag-
ment CI (D. 115): ‘To the soul belongs the logos which augments itself.’ In
neither text is the meaning of logos crystal clear, but it cannot be found in any
preservation of 'the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in the long run'. If
there is any reference to bulk at all (which is not obvious), it must be to a magni-
tude that increases or whose limits cannot be discovered. And even if, as I believe,
the logos of I.2 ‘according to which ali things come to pass’ is also intended as a
suggestion of measure, that statement is too cryptic to tell us what kind of
measure is involved.
There are, however, some texts and testimonia that refer unambiguously to
measure or equality preserved over time. That is so for the cycles and seasons
150 Excursus I: The cosmic cycle
mentioned in XLII (D. 100), the Great Year in XLIII (DK A 13 and A 5), the
extinction and renewal of the sun each day (XLVIII, D. 6), and the generational
measure of thirty years as a return from childhood to childhood (XCV, DK A 19;
and compare XCVIII, D. 20). Succession rather than simultaneity is also suggested
by the identification of deity with ‘day and night, winter and summer, war and
peace, satiety and hunger’ (CXXIII, D. 67). It is again a diachronic rather than a
synchronic pattern that emerges from the ‘transposition’ (metapesonta) and
equivalence between ‘living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old’
(XCIII, D. 88). So it is reasonable to assume that it is successive stages in time,
rather than some mysterious identity at every moment, that is implied by the
equation of mortals and immortals, ‘living the other's death, dead in the other's
life? in XCII (D. 62).154 Similarly, when we hear that ‘the beginning and end are
common’ in a circle (XCIX, D. 103), there is reason to think of a cycle of
periodic recurrence. All the more so for CII (D. 36): ‘for souls it is death to
be born as water, for water it is death to become earth; out of earth water comes
to be, out of water soul'. Here the terminology of birth and death makes clear
that we are dealing with a cycle of successive stages, where equivalence is
expressed as recurrence. It may or may not follow from such a pattern of trans-
formation that, in Burnet's words, ‘the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in
the long run remains the same’; but that is most certainly not what CII (D. 36)
says.155
In sum, the notion of periodicity, of measure and equality preserved by
regular recurrence over time — whether a single day, a lifetime, or a Great Year
— is a central theme in the fragments. If there is one notion of measure that pre-
dominates in Heraclitus’ thought, it is this one; in fact, this is the only notion of
measure clearly illustrated in the texts.
Now the unity or harmony of opposites can also be exemplified in states or
processes envisioned at a single moment, as in the case of the bow (LXXVIII, D.
51), where the archer's arms and the parts of his instrument are stretched in
opposite directions at the instant of maximum tension, just before the arrow is
released. In that case the unity and balance of opposites is realized by their
simultaneous operation, their momentary co-presence.! 56 Heraclitus’ doctrine
of harmonié, the equilibrium and fitting-together of opposites, is not reducible
to the theme of periodicity or recurrence. But, I submit, the doctrine of measure
is so reducible. In every case where the notion of measure or quantitative equality
is clearly applicable in the fragments, the only unmistakable applications are to
cycles of succession and recurrence. And that even holds for the one case where
what is measured seems to be the bulk of a form of matter (XXXIX, D. 31B).
This point is of primary importance, since Burnet's case against the cosmic
cycle of world formation and conflagration in Heraclitus depends very largely
upon the claim that ‘it is inconsistent with the central idea of his system, the
thought that possessed his whole mind’ (pp. 158f.). According to Burnet, that
thought is ‘the perception of the underlying unity of the warring opposites’
(ibid. p. 143); and he has interpreted this unity in exclusively synchronic terms
(in the light of the bow image as reinforced by Plato's contrast between Heraclitus
and Empedocles, p. 144), so that the harmony of opposites, and the measures
that preserve it, are identified with a simultaneous condition of equality, rather
than with some periodic restoration of the balance. As a result, when Burnet
comes to discuss the phenomena of periodicity which he recognizes within
Heraclitus' thought, he is obliged to describe these as an exception to the doc-
trine of fixed measures!157 A cosmic cycle of conflagration followed by recur-
rent world formation is ‘inconsistent with the central idea’ of Heraclitus’ system
only if this idea is construed in terms of momentary rather than diachronic
Excursus I: The cosmic cycle 151
balance. There is no inconsistency if the kosmos which is ‘the same for all’ is
conceived as a pattern spread out over time, like a sine curve in wave theory: a
fixed cycle of transformations between polar extremes. The evidence from the
fragments in favor of such a diachronic view is, I hope to have shown, over-
whelming. Simultaneous equality, as in the drawn bow, is a particular case of the
unity of opposites. It is not the pattern of cosmic order as such.
When Burnet comes to discuss XL he again finds an argument against the con-
flagration. ‘When gold is given in exchange for wares and wares for gold, the sum
or *measure" of each remains constant, though they change owners. All the
wares and gold do not come into the same hands. In the same way, when any-
thing becomes fire, something of equal amount must cease to be fire, if the
“exchange” is to be a just one.'158 Since this argument has exerted a consider-
able influence, we must look a little more closely at its logic. It infers that if the
cosmic process reached a point where all things were absorbed into fire, or had
not yet emerged from it, then by analogy there would have to be a market
situation with only gold and no merchandise (or with all of both confusedly in
the same hands). But of course there is normally no such situation. Therefore
Heraclitus cannot have used the market simile to express a cosmic development
into and out of fire.
Now this argument is cogent only if we add a premiss to the effect that (i)
Heraclitus intended the market simile to be applicable to cosmic fire in every
respect, or (ii) the relevant respect is just the continuity of exchanges based upon
a permanent distinction between coins and merchandise. Now the first premiss is
absurd: no philosopher can use a simile or comparison that is apt in every respect.
And the second premiss, though not absurd, is quite arbitrary: it guarantees the
desired conclusion by begging the question at issue. Hence this interpretation of
XL provides an argument only if we need none, that is to say, only if we are
already convinced that the point being made is just that the rules of cosmic
exchange exclude a passage of all things into fire. Those who are not convinced
will find the meaning of the simile elsewhere, in the equivalence established
between fire and all things, and in the formal parallel to CXXIV (D. 10): ‘from
all things one and from one thing all’. Together, these two points guarantee that
the measures of cosmic order will be preserved even in the case of the most
radical change conceivable: the total extinction of cosmic fire or its rekindling
at the cost of everything else.
It was Karl Reinhardt who created the modern study of the pre-Socratics by
insisting that archaic thinkers like Heraclitus and Parmenides could only be
understood by careful study of their own words, not by taking over the inter-
pretations worked out from a later point of view by Aristotle and Theophrastus.
For Heraclitus Reinhardt went further and showed how different views of his
thought are projected according to the philosophical interests and presuppositions
of each author who quotes him. It was easy enough for Reinhardt to undermine
Zeller's position on the ecpyrosis by pointing out how largely it depended upon
Clement's interpretation, whereas this interpretation in turn can be shown to
derive from some Stoic commentator.159 In addition, Reinhardt deprived
Zeller's interpretation of its most picturesque support within the text by reject-
ing as a Stoic or Christian paraphrase the reference to judgment by fire in CXXI
(D. 66). This passage will be considered in its place. For the moment we look at
Reinhardt's interpretation of the concept of measure, which determines his
understanding of XL.
Reinhardt begins by suggesting that if the measures of cosmic fire in XXXVII
(D. 30) are to be interpreted in terms of world formation and conflagration, they
must mean that each world period ‘takes the same length of time, represents the
152 Excursus I: The cosmic cycle
same development, as all the others’. (Parmenides pp. 176f. This is not entirely
accurate. As we have seen, the doctrine of measures preserved over time means
that even the most radical extremes, fire alone and all things in the wniverse, are
in some sense equivalent or of equal value, so that the measures of equilibrium
are preserved by a regular oscillation from one pole to the other.) Against this
over-specific interpretation of XXXVII (D. 30), Reinhardt offers two objections.
First, 'no Heraclitus was needed to teach that: that was the concept of diakosmos
from the very beginning, as taught by the old Milesians'.160 Reinhardt's second
objection is: *How can such a sense be hiding in such words? Metra must rather
mean the quantity of matter (Stoffmasse) transformed by being burnt up and
extinguished’, since this is the sense expressed by the verb metreitai (‘is
measured’) in the following context (XXXIX, D. 31B). ‘The measure of the sea
remains the same, while the material is continually changing . . . the water flows
by, but the river remains always the same (L, D. 12). The sun is new every day,
and yet will in all eternity never transgress its measures (XLIV, D. 94)... Thus
the pyros tropai too, the transformations of fire, are not alternating periods but
a continual transition between material opposites’ (ibid. 177). ‘Earth is only
transformed fire, fire is transformed earth, as the dead are only the living
deceased, the living are dead reawakened to life . . . the inner unity, the tauton,
the “invisible harmony” (LXXX, D. 54) becomes visible only through duality,
contradiction, and eternal exchange’ (p. 179). It is in this context that Reinhardt
cites, without further commentary, the exchange of fire for all things in XL.
It will not detract from Reinhardt's great services to the interpretation of
Heraclitus if we note that, on the question of *measures', his view is largely
identical with that of Burnet. In his eagerness to deny the doctrine of world
periods, he is even prepared to overlook the importance of periodicity and to
interpret the concept of measures exclusively in terms of the relative proportion
of cosmic masses and the like at the present moment.161
Agreeing with Zeller, Burnet, and Reinhardt on so many points, I must also
agree that Heraclitus’ conception of the universal structure of things can be illus-
trated by instantaneous or momentary phenomena, like the tension of the drawn
bow, or by processes spread out in time that are not necessarily cyclical or
periodic, like the flowing of water in a river and the tuning or playing of a lyre.
But I insist that the most systematic expression of cosmic structure in the frag-
ments refers to processes of a cyclical character, like the pattern that unifies day
and night. And I see no reason why Heraclitus should have failed to find this
same pattern of symmetry and balance in the Milesian doctrine of world forma-
tion, as long as it is completed by the reverse process of a return to the starting
point. The unity of primordial fire and differentiated world is simply the unity
of day and night written in the largest possible letters, like the unity of summer
and winter within the rhythmic structure of a great or greatest year. That he did
in fact play with this tremendous pattern, like Anaximander, like Empedocles,
and like a modern cosmologist (but perhaps with more irony), seems to me estab-
lished not because we can trust Clement's interpretation, but because we can
trust the direct and vivid sense of the words and imagery of the fragments.
It would be tedious to prolong the polemic by considering in detail the recent
reformulations of the Burnet-Reinhardt view by Kirk and Vlastos. I would in
conclusion only ask how, if cosmogony is to be excluded, the equivalence be-
tween fire and all things is to be understood. (This is the same as to ask: in what
sense are all things ‘reversals of fire'?) Within the cosmogonic pattern the answer
is easy and obvious. Without it, any answer must be arbitrary and contrived. If
the chronological priority of fire is denied, then the only priority left for it is
symbolical and perhaps metaphysical. But there is no physical sense in which it
Commentary: XLI (D. 76) 153
is true to say that all things are exchanged for fire, but false to say that all things
are exchanged for water or for earth.162
XLI
XLI (D. 76) Plutarch: [As Heraclitus said, the death of fire is birth for air and
the death of air is birth for water. ]
. The authenticity of this, one of the most familiar of all quotations
from Heraclitus, was challenged long ago by Zeller and has often
been denied ѕіпсе.163
On the question of authenticity, we cannot arrive at any definite
conclusion. But there is a more important and less controversial point
to be noted: that Heraclitus spoke of a cyclical pattern of elemental
transformation in terms of birth and death. For that is precisely the
point which this text has in common with CII.
Since my commentary on XLI—XLIII will be more concerned with
problems of documentation and the reliability of our sources than
with the interpretation of Heraclitus’ own text, I have grouped this
discussion as Excursus II. The questions at issue may be of little
interest for the general reader. The commentary proper resumes on
p. 158.
Excursus II: On the documentary basis for XLI—XLIII
As a verbatim quotation of XLI, the only plausible candidate is the text of Plu-
tarch given above. The version of Maximus of Tyre, 'Fire lives the death of earth
and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water',
although preferred by Bywater and given first place by Diels, is obviously a free
variant, imitating the language of XCII (D. 62), which Maximus has just cited.164
Hence Maximus is alone in speaking of //fe and death here, where Plutarch and
Marcus Aurelius speak of birth and death, as in CII (D. 36). Also, his version of
the cycle is asymmetrical, and the leap from earth to fire has no parallel either in
other fragments or in other early theories. Any judicious comparison of the
candidates for XLI will lead to the elimination of this version.1 95 Much the same
can be said for the citation in Marcus Aurelius. Unlike Maximus, Marcus knows
Heraclitus well; but he quotes from memory, and his verbal memory is not par-
ticularly good. It is doubtful whether any of the numerous citations from
Heraclitus in Marcus' Notebooks gives us the original text. The quotation here
is continued by V (D. 71—3), where we can recognize a vague paraphrase of IV
(D. 17, from Clement). There is no reason to suppose that Marcus' version of
XLI is closer to the original.
So we are left with Plutarch's text, and with the special problems surrounding
quotations in Plutarch. Plutarch is a man of vast erudition, with a special fond-
ness for Heraclitus. One of his lost works was entitled ‘What were Heraclitus’
doctrines?' (Lamprias Catalogue no. 205, in the Teubner Moralia VII, ed. F.H.
Sandbach, p. 9.) Over 60 citations or clear allusions to Heraclitus have been
154 Excursus II: Documentation for XLI (D. 76)
counted in his extant works, covering some 30 of the 126 fragments in Diels'
original numbering.!66 [n the surviving literature of antiquity, only Clement of
Alexandria displays a comparable knowledge of Heraclitus’ text.167 But Plutarch
is an accomplished stylist, who can blend Heraclitus’ words into his own text or
even imitate the archaic manner in developing a ‘quotation’ along his own lines
(as in reference to the Sibyl in XXXIV, D. 92). Furthermore, Plutarch relied
upon his memory, which was fortunately very good; he ‘did not verify his
quotations, or did so rarely, by looking up the passage in his іехіѕ’.168 Asa
result, when we rely upon Plutarch for the best or only citation of a fragment,
there is always some reason to doubt whether we have an exact quotation.169
In the case of XLI, Plutarch himself seems to have regarded this as a faithful
rendering, since he cites a shorter and freer version elsewhere.170 The parallels
in Marcus and Maximus show that the doctrine was well known and regularly
ascribed to Heraclitus. Unfortunately, this is no proof of authenticity. The form
of XLI seems to be more Stoic than Heraclitean, in view of the mention of 'air'
in all three versions: Plutarch, Marcus, and Maximus. As Zeller pointed out, aër
is conspicuously absent from XXXVIII—XXXIX and CII (D. 36). Even the
Theophrastean doxography does not mention aer, but speaks only of ‘exhalations’
(anathy miaseis) from earth and sea. Now we know that the Stoics adopted the
canonical four elements from Aristotle; and we have a Stoic commentary on
XXXVIII that inserts aër between fire and earth. (See p. 314, n. 135.) It is easy
to suppose that Plutarch and our later authorities for XLI are reproducing not
an original text but a Stoic paraphrase. And the Stoic text in turn will have been
a natural, but misleading extrapolation from CII (D. 36), with fire and air taking
the place of ‘souls’. Such is now the prevailing view.171
I previously argued against this view on the grounds that it was supported by
unjustified assumptions.172 The concept of elemental aër was not discovered by
the Stoics; it is an essential concept in Milesian meteorology, and there would be
nothing anachronistic in a reference to the air in Heraclitus. On the contrary, it
is the absence of air in XXXVIII-XXXIX and CII (D. 36) which is surprising
and requires some explanation. Furthermore, there is something absurd about
the three-element theory foisted upon Heraclitus by Zeller and Burnet. Such a
view cannot give any plausible account of evaporation, wind formation, or the
production of rain and lightning from the clouds — precisely the range of natural
phenomena in which Ionian speculation took a special interest, and which best
illustrates Heraclitus’ own saying: ‘cold warms up, warm cools off, moist parches,
dry dampens’ (XLIX, D. 126). According to the three-element theory, these
atmospheric phenomena could be defined and distinguished from one another
only by some kind of mixture of water (or sea) and fire, some combination of
these elements in distinct proportions. But there is no trace of any such doctrine
either in the fragments or in the Theophrastean doxography. The theory of
elemental mixture or compounds (and in this sense, the very notion of element)
seems to have been an invention of Parmenides, developed by his successors. In
the absence of such a theory, the early cosmologists had to explain each
phenomenon separately, in terms of its causal source and consequences. There is
no room for the reduction of many stages to three, or for the elimination of
atmospheric phenomena in favor of fire and sea. Heraclitus may have had his
own reasons for omitting any mention of aer; and CII (D. 36) can be explained
without resorting to a theory of three elements. The latter is a creation of Zeller,
a misbegotten product of the Theophrastean doxography, a result of reading
XXXVIII and CII as if they were presented as the complete statement of a sys-
tematic cosmology.1 73
Thus the reasons often given for rejecting XLI are bad ones. But the fact that
Excursus П: Documentation for XLII (D. 100) 155
a claim has been supported by poor arguments does not show that the claim
itself is false. There are also good reasons for suspicion here. There is the lack of
a uniform text underlying the different variants (Plutarch, Maximus, Marcus),
the absence of aér elsewhere while it is present in every variant of XLI, and the
natural explanation of this discrepancy in the Stoic exegesis which introduces
the four elements into Heraclitus' cosmology, an exegesis so ancient and wide-
spread by Plutarch's time that he could easily confuse it with a memory of
Heraclitus' own words.
XLII
XLIIA (D. 100) Plutarch: [The sun is overseer and sentinel <of cycles for
determining . . . changes and ‘seasons which bear all things’ according to
Heraclitus.]
XLIIB Plutarch: [The year contains in itself beginning and end together of
‘all things which seasons bear and earth brings forth’.]
Here we face the problem of Plutarch quotations in an extreme form. In XLIIB
(De Defectu Oraculorum 416A) Heraclitus’ name is not cited, and this passage
was not listed by Diels among the fragments. But Heraclitus has just been men-
tioned twice in the context, first for his view of a human generation as thirty
years (XCVA = D. A19) and then in connection with the (explicitly Stoic) doc-
trine of conflagration (De Defectu Orac. 415F). In XLIIA, from Platonic Ques-
tions, Plutarch is discussing Plato's view of time in the Timaeus as astral motion,
ordered and measured by regular cycles or periods. ‘And of these [viz. measure
and limits and cycles] is the sun overseer and sentinel, for defining and arbitrat-
ing and revealing and displaying changes and “seasons which bear all things"
according to Heraclitus; the sun turns out to be collaborator with the first and
sovereign god not in small or petty matters but in the greatest and most decisive’
(Plat. Quest. 1007D—E, after Cherniss). Thus in both passages the seasons are
mentioned in connection with other periods, beginning with the human lifetime
and its recurrence from generation to generation, passing through the various
astronomical cycles, including what Plato calls the ‘Perfect Year’ when planets,
sun, and moon will return to the same relative position (Timaeus 39D), and cul-
minating in the cosmic cycle of conflagration and renewal, as recognized by the
Stoics (De Defectu Orac. 415F). This is a witches’ brew of erudition and specu-
lation, and it is hard to see what we can safely extract for Heraclitus.
Reinhardt connected these passages with two other groups of testimonies, on
the length of the human generation (XCV, D. A19) and on the length of the
astronomical Magnus Annus (XLIII, D. A13).! 7* He proposed, in effect, that
some lost Heraclitean text indicated a proportional relationship between (1) the
annual cycle of the seasons, whose measure would be 3 seasons of 4 months each,
with 30 days to a month, i.e. 3 x 4 x 30 = 360; (2) the cycle of human life as 30
years, as a ‘month’ each of whose days is a year, and (3) the Great Year of
10,800 (= 360 x 30) solar years, each of whose ‘days’ is a human generation.
Since the word ‘season’ (hór£) also means ‘hour’ or ‘interval of time’,
Heraclitus’ phrase ‘the seasons which bear all things’ (or perhaps ‘all things which
the seasons bring’) would then refer to this whole system of proportional
сусіеѕ.175
I find this reconstruction persuasive, since it brings together bits of infor-
156 Excursus II: Documentation for XLII (D. A13, A5)
mation that would otherwise be disjointed and almost unintelligible, and it pre-
sents the whole as a genuine kosmos, a marvelous structuring of natural change
by fixed measures of recurrence, understood according to the seasonal pattern of
the year. Still, the phrase about what the seasons bring is the only thing expressly
ascribed to Heraclitus in XLII, and that is not much. So it is understandable that
not all commentators accept Reinhardt's interpretation.!76
One aspect of Plutarch's context in XLIIA that Reinhardt did not explore is
the role of the sun as regent for the cosmic monarch and overseer of astral cycles.
This is so obviously a theme which Plutarch derives from Stoic and Hellenistic
sources that it might seem pointless to trace it to Heraclitus. (Cf. von Arnim I,
499, 502, etc.) But here too the Stoics may be following rather than leading.
The parallel between sun and cosmic fire is attested in the tropa? of XXXVII
(D. 30); it is alluded to again in CXXII (D. 16): ‘how will one escape from that
which never sets?' If the divine ruling principle is a kind of superior sun, then the
sun is a kind of inferior cosmic god. The notion of the sun as regent of the uni-
verse is attested in the Cratylus where Plato is giving a cosmological etymology
for ‘justice’ (to dikaion). The principle of cosmic justice is first represented by
the sun, which ‘administers all things’ (epitropeuein ta onta, 413 B5), buta
moment later identified with fire (413 C2). The term for ‘administer’, epitro-
peuein, means literally ‘to rule in another's name’, ‘to rule as governor or vice-
roy’. It is a good Ionic form and could have been used by Heraclitus.1 77
Plato's text shows that the Heracliteans of the late fifth (or early fourth) cen-
tury were familiar with the notion of the sun as representative or viceroy of cos-
mic fire. It is another and bolder step to conclude that the idea goes back to
Heraclitus himself.178 If we take this step, we can provide a neat counterpart to
the relation between the sun and Justice asserted in XLIV (D. 94): the sun main-
tains cosmic justice by watching over the course of the other stars, but (like some
Persian satrap under surveillance by the King) his own path from solstice to
solstice is guarded by Dike herself and the Furies.
XLIII
XLIIIA (D. A13) Censorinus: [There is a <Great> Year . . . whose winter isa
great flood (cataclysmos) and whose summer is an ecpyrosis, that is, a world con-
flagration. For it is thought that in these alternating periods the world is now
going up in flames, now turning to water. Heraclitus and Linus <believed this
cycle to consist of> 10,800 years.]
XLIIIB (D. A5) Simplicius: [Heraclitus posits a certain order (taxis) and fixed
time for the change of the cosmos according to some fated necessity (heimar-
mené ananké.]
Here again we must wade into the swamp of the doxographical tradition in order
to retrieve some information about what Heraclitus said. We begin with XLIIIB,
which is free of Stoic contamination.
Simplicius’ source is Theophrastus (fr. 1, Diels, Doxographi Graeci p. 475).
This is guaranteed by verbal parallels in independent versions of the doxography.
Thus Diogenes Laertius: ‘The cosmos is generated from fire and again ignited
according to certain alternating cycles throughout eternity; and this occurs
Excursus II: Documentation for XLIII (D. A13, A5) 157
according to fate (kath’ heimarmenén).’179 In Diogenes the abstract word for
‘fate’ replaces the adjectival form ‘fated necessity’ in Simplicius. The latter prob-
ably reproduces Theophrastus’ own text. The original connection also shows
through in Aetius: ‘Heraclitus [held that] all things occur according to fate,
which is the same as necessity.'1 80
So, according to Theophrastus, Heraclitus spoke of the 'fated necessity' of a
periodic change in the world order, involving the generation of all things from
fire and their eventual dissolution into fire again. In this respect, the only thing
new in the Stoic version is the term 'ecpyrosis' for the conflagration.
I have argued that in recognizing allusions to such a cycle in the fragments
Theophrastus was essentially right. We must now ask whether (a) he is also right
in saying that Heraclitus posited 'a definite time' for the change, and (b) whether
he is correct in speaking of ‘fated necessity’. There is no direct evidence, but the
indirect evidence supports an affirmative response to (b). The term ‘necessity’ is
attested in a similar connection for Empedocles (fr. 115); and the cosmic appli-
cation, implicit in Empedocles, is explicit in the almost contemporary fragment
of Leucippus: ‘nothing happens at random, but all things take place for some
reason (logos) and by necessity (ananké)' (DK 80.B 2). The same term occurs in
Heraclitean imitations in the treatise On Regimen, where ‘necessity’ is paralleled
by expressions for Fate: ‘everything occurs by divine necessity (ananké) . . . each
thing fulfills its allotted destiny (peprómené moira).'181 There is thus no reason
to doubt Theophrastus when he asserts that Heraclitus used similar language.
We are left with question (a), whether Theophrastus is also to be credited
when he reports a definite time for the cosmic change. This is ambiguous. It can
mean either (a.1) that Heraclitus asserted that the cycle lasted a definite time,
without saying how long, or (a.2) that he specified a definite temporal interval.
Now on (a.1) the report is unproblematic, even trivial: if Heraclitus spoke of a
cosmic cycle, he certainly thought of it as fixed and definite: that would follow
naturally from the importance he assigns to *measures'. But (a.2) is more interest-
ing: if we follow Theophrastus on this point, we must combine his information
with the doxography from Censorinus, which tells us just what that temporal
measure is supposed to be.
Censorinus' source is not Theophrastus but some Stoic author, perhaps
Diogenes of Babylonia, a pupil of Chrysippus, active in the first half of the sec-
ond century B.C.182 By this time the Stoics had been interpreting Heraclitus
according to their own lights for at least a century. Was one of them prepared to
go further and furnish a number for the cosmic cycle lacking in Heraclitus' text?
Nothing in the preserved fragments would lead us to expect a definite num-
ber like 10,800 years: the only number given for a cosmic change is a rough one:
half and half (in XXXVIII, D. 31A). But the number 10,800 is indirectly con-
firmed by the much better attested number 30 for a generation (XCV, D. A19).
For 10,800 is 30 x 360: it represents a ‘year’ in which each ‘day’ is a generation.
Since the number 30 is almost certainly genuine, the number 10,800 is likely to
be so as well. Or are we to suppose that some Stoic commentator invented a cos-
mic number to fit Heraclitus’ own number for a generation? Anything is possible
here; but the doubt just expressed seems to carry scepticism a bit too far. Most
scholars have felt, with reason, that the two numbers stand or fall together; and
nearly all have accepted both as authentic.183 What they have not all seen, how-
ever, is that if we accept the number 10,800 for Heraclitus’ great year, we can
scarcely separate it from Theophrastus’ report about a ‘definite time’ for cosmic
change. If the number 10,800 is genuine, that must be what Theophrastus is
referring to.
158 Commentary: XLII—XLIII (D. 100, A13, A5)
Conclusions on XLII—XLIII
Thus the implications of the phrase 'all things which the seasons bring
to birth' in XLII are considerably enriched, if we accept as Heraclitean
the number 10,800 given in XLIIIA and combine it with the figure
of 30 years for a human generation (XCV, D. A19). For what emerges
is a set of proportional relations linking together the seasons in the
narrow sense, determined by the annual course of the sun (XLIV, D.
94), with the succession of human generations, the cycle of elemental
transformations, and some vast expanse of time: a great year in which
each day is the length of a human generation. We cannot dismiss as a
Stoic distortion this interpretation of the number 10,800 in terms of
a great year, with a summer of cosmic fire and a winter of cosmic
flood. For that becomes, in effect, the report of Theophrastus, or a
natural inference from it, given the additional information about a
‘great year’ of 10,800 ordinary years. For to call the larger cycle a
year is to imply that it has seasons. And the great summer will of
course be hot (and, in Greece, dry), while the winter will be wet and
cold.184
The passage in Plato's Timaeus (39D) which contains the earliest
reference to a Great Year in extant literature says that it is the time
when the sun, moon and planets all return to the same relative
position, despite all their intervening ‘reversals’ (tropaz). The passage
in Censorinus just before XLIIIA similarly defines the Great Year in
astronomical terms; and goes on to speak of the summer of ecpyrosis
and the winter of cosmic flood. Reinhardt protested that the great
year of the astronomers and the cosmic cycle of flood and confla-
gration 'are the most widely separate things that can be found in the
world', since the former is a matter of exact calculation and the latter
a wild astrological phantasy *which mocks all calculation and is not
even of Greek origin’ but imported from Babylon (Parmenides, p.
184). But here Reinhardt was mistaken. We now know that the tech-
nique of exact astronomical calculation was itself imported from
Babylon. And we know from Renaissance figures like Kepler that
wild ‘Pythagorean’ speculation about cosmic harmonies and mystic
numbers can be combined with — can even directly contribute to —
major achievements in exact science. Indeed, the growth of astronomy
in Babylon was itself a response to the superstitious interest in
eclipses as omens of disaster. So Heraclitus, like some Stoics and
many other thinkers after him, may well have entertained the notion
of a vast cycle conceived in precise astronomical terms but interpreted
Commentary: XLIV (D. 94) 159
as a wholly speculative pattern of decline and renewal for the cosmos.
Reinhardt rightly insisted upon the close connection between the
great year and the cycle of human generations. But this systematic
parallel between macrocosm and microcosm, between day, month,
year, generation, and cosmic year has consequences which Reinhardt
was unwilling to face. Just as one day-and-night yields to another, its
equal or equivalent (XX, D. 106), and as one cycle of the moon is
repeated in the following month, one circle of seasons renewed by
the next year, even so is the life of man repeated in the next gener-
ation, when a man's son is reaching his full powers as the father's life
declines. (See on XCIII-XCVIII.) When this pattern is extended to a
cosmic year, it implies that the cycle of vitality and decline, waxing
and waning, ‘kindling and going out’, will be repeated by a successor,
as a father by his son. The notion of a single logos or numerical ratio
applying throughout, a single kosmos or ordering ‘the same for all’,
implies that the present world order is like a living being, an 'ever-
living fire’ whose survival takes the form of replacement and renewal
by an equivalent successor. Some such idea of successive worlds was
probably older than Heraclitus. What is distinctive of his thought is
the rigour with which the parallel between day, year, life, and cosmos
is pursued, and reflected in a system of numerical proportions.195
Our information is too scanty to tell whether Heraclitus identified
the ‘winter’ of the great year with a cosmic cataclysm, a destruction
by flood. (Some pre-Socratic theorist must have done so: see n. 184.)
It is quite possible that Heraclitus’ own reference to the Magnus Annus
of 10,800 years was carefully ambiguous between a cycle of cosmic
disasters short of world destruction (as in Plato's version in the
Timaeus) and a larger cycle of cosmogony and ecpyrosis.
XLIV
XLIV (D. 94) The sun will not transgress his measures. If he does, the Furies,
ministers of Justice (Dike), will find him out.
The text poses two questions: (1) what are the measures of the sun?
and (2) why is Justice involved?
(1) The measures which the sun will not ‘overstep’ (hyperbésetat)
must be his visible path through the sky which varies with the season
of the year, as the Greeks (and before them the Babylonians) knew
very well. They laid out their maps according to the direction both
of the summer sunrise and sunset and also of the winter sunrise and
160 | Commentary: XLIV (D. 94)
sunset; in between they defined due east and due west as the ‘equi-
noctial rising’ and the *equinoctial setting'.186 Thus the annual vari-
ations in the sun's path were taken as a basis for establishing what we
call the points of the compass. And the same variations serve to define
the four fixed points in a scientific calendar: summer and winter
solstices (tropai), with spring and autumn equinoxes. When star
charts are drawn to plot the sun's course through the zodiac, the
annual variations in the visible path are correlated with stages in its
invisible path among the constellations; points of solstice and equinox
mark off the astronomical seasons as four sections of this course.
When the geometry of the celestial sphere is fully understood, the two
equinoctial points will be determined by the intersection of the
ecliptic (the sun's annual path) with the celestial equator. It is un-
likely that Heraclitus was familiar with this last conception. Although
the theory of the celestial sphere seems to have begun in sixth-
century Miletus, we do not know whether it reached this degree of
geometrical clarity before the time of Oenopides in the middle of the
fifth century.197 But anyone like Heraclitus, who had access to the
astronomical knowledge available in Miletus and Samos at the end of
the sixth century, must have been familiar with the correlations be-
tween the annual changes in the sun's visible path and its less con-
spicuous course among the stars. It was the latter, after all, that per-
mitted the astronomers and calendar-makers to mark off the progress
of the seasons on a day-to-day basis — directly, once the zodiac was
in use, and indirectly earlier, by reference to such events as the rising
and setting of Arcturus just before or just after the sun.
Now for Heraclitus ‘the invisible fitting-together (harmonie) is
better than the visible' (LXXX, D. 54). So if, initially, the measures
of the sun are represented by its path in the sky on any given day,
these measures must also be traced in the pattern of annual variation
from solstice (tropé) to solstice and back again. The measures of the
sun are ultimately the measures of the solar year. The imaginary situ-
ation of the sun's overstepping these measures might be realized by a
deviation from its course on any given day. But the more dramatic,
and humanly more meaningful transgression would be for the sun to
continue, in the winter, to rise later and farther to the south, and
finally fail to rise altogether. This fear of the sun going outas the days
grow shorter seems to have played a great role in archaic religions. It
accounts for so many festivals (including Christmas) in the vicinity of
the winter solstice, mostly festivals of celebration once the days have
begun to lengthen again as the sun rises further to the north. Thus we
Commentary: XLV (D. 120) 161
celebrate our own ‘new year’ shortly after this reversal of direction.
In Mediterranean lands the shortening of the nights towards the
summer solstice is less dramatic than in northern Europe. But in
modern Greece at any rate, St John’s Day (24 June) is traditionally
celebrated with bonfires as in the north, and associated with the
solstice. Some villagers observe the custom of rising ‘early on this day
in order to see the sun turning like a “windmill or a wheel”, as they
say’,188
(2) The cosmic guarantee against the primitive fear of the sun’s
failure to rise (or, in summer, to set) is appropriately expressed by
Heraclitus in the strongest imagery of Greek religion, where the Furies
(Erinyes) represent relentless, primitive vengeance against moral and
ritual transgression. But the mention of Dike indicates that the order
in question is not one of blind vengeance. Dike represents the
enlightened principle of the Justice of Zeus, his daughter by Themis
or ‘law’, whose sisters are named Lawfulness (Eunomié) and Peace
(Eiréné) in the standard genealogy (Theogony 901f.).
It was Anaximander who first articulated this notion of justice and
fate as a cosmic reparation between opposing powers ‘according to
the ordering of time’. (See text above, p. 18). The role assigned to
Dike by Heraclitus in XLIV is a personified expression of Anaxi-
mander’s concept of cosmic justice, insofar as both authors see the
regularity of nature as exemplified in the order of the seasons.
For other references to Justice, see on LXIX (D. 23), LXXXII (D.
80), LXXXVII (D. 28B); compare XL (D. 90), CXXI (D. 66), and
CXXII (D. 16).
XLV
XLV (D.120) The limits (termata) of Dawn and Evening <is> the Bear; and
opposite the Bear, the Warder of luminous Zeus.
I interpret this as a commentary on XLIV. But there are some points
that must be taken account of in any interpretation.
(1) ‘Dawn and evening’, the first two words in the Greek sentence,
have a double sense: (a) the beginning and end of day, and (b) the
directions of east (sunrise) and west (sunset).
(2) Termata (‘limits’) means the goal of a race or the completion
of a journey; the stone or pillar around which runners or chariots
turn before heading back to their starting point; and, by extension,
the borders or limits of a region.
162 Commentary: XLV (D. 120)
(3) ‘The Bear’ (arktos) must designate Ursa Major, our Big Dipper
or Great Bear, a general mark for the celestial pole and hence for the
north.189
(4) The Warder (ouros) opposite the Bear (arktos) can only be the
star Arcturus (Gr. Arkt-ouros), described as the Bear-watcher (arkto-
phylax) in the astronomical poem of Aratus (Phainomena 92).190
Now the risings and settings of Arcturus are a familiar signal of the
seasons as early as Hesiod. In Works and Days 566 and 610, the
evening and dawn risings of Arcturus (its ‘limits of dawn and evening’)
correspond to the beginning of spring and fall, that is, roughly to the
equinoxes.!?! But in XLV Arcturus appears not as a seasonal sign but
as the mythical guardian set by Zeus to watch the Bear. The unusual
epithet ‘luminous’ or ‘bright’ (azthrios) can be a reference to his tra-
ditional role as sky-god and weather-god (since azthrié means ‘clear
sky’, ‘good weather’), but also a reinterpretation of Zeus as cel-
estial fire in the upper sky (azthér).
So much is clear. What follows is my own best guess at unravelling
the knot of the riddle.
Dawn and Evening stand not merely for east and west but for sun-
rise and sunset, and hence as marks for the course of the sun. The
Bear, or celestial pole, is the point or region around which the sun
turns in its daily course. On first reading, taking termata as turning-
point for the sun each day, it is only the Bear (and not the Bear-
watcher) whose presence here is explained. Hence I propose a strong
punctuation after ‘Bear’.
On second reading, however, the termata may be understood as
the ‘limits’ or extreme points for sunrise and sunset over the year,
that is, as the tropaz or solstitial points which mark the annual
course of the sun. These risings and settings are at best alluded to in
the enigmatic ‘limits (termata) of dawn and evening’. How far the
reader is willing to credit Heraclitus with this allusion is likely to
depend on whether he has been convinced by my interpretation of
XLIV.
What then of ‘the Warder of luminous Zeus, opposite the Bear’? I
read this second clause as a distinct thought. Opposite the Bear (and
revolving around it, like the Sun) stands Arcturus, the star which in
Hesiod gives the signal for spring and fall. If Arcturus is presented
here as guardian of the Bear, it is because the Bear stands for the pole,
and hence for the fixed regularity of solar and astral cycles. Its stellar
guardian will preserve the measures of cosmic justice after the sun has
set. (Compare the watcher ‘that never sets’ in CXXII, D. 16). Just as
Commentary: XLVI-XLVIII (D. 99, 3, 6) 163
‘luminous Zeus’ here corresponds to Dike in XLIV, so Arcturus
appears in the role of the Furies as celestial policeman. Once the sun
has set, the daily and annual ordinances of bright Zeus are represented
by the clockwork regularity of the fixed stars.
XLVI-XLVITI
XLVI (р. 99) Plutarch: [Heraclitus says ‘if there were no sun it would be
night.’]
XLVII (D. 3) Aetius: [Heraclitus says the sun is the size of a human foot.]
XLVIIIA (D. 6) Aristotle: [As Heraclitus says, the sun is new (or young) every
day.]
XLVIIB Plato: [The sun of Heraclitus . . . is extinguished in old age . . . but
rekindled again.]
These four texts present two sets of contrasting elements in the
description of the sun. (1) It grows old and is extinguished every
night; but it regains its youth and vitality when rekindled every
morning. (2) It is a small and insignificant portion of the universe,
no bigger than it appears or about the size of a human foot, but also
the cause of day and night, whose light exceeds that of the moon and
all the stars together. The first antithesis is presupposed by Plato's
text, and confirmed by the post-Aristotelian doxography.1?? The
second antithesis is not formulated as such in any extant testimony,
but it makes a meaningful pair out of what are otherwise two isolated
comments.
The commentators have debated whether or not Heraclitus’
remark about the size of the sun is to be taken literally. My view is
that he is exploiting, without endorsing or criticizing, the natural
assumption that the sun is just the size it appears.!93 Scientific specu-
lation on the size of the sun was provoked by the geometric model
for the heavens proposed by Anaximander and his successors. The
earliest attested estimate, ascribed to Anaxagoras (DK 59.A 42.8),
that the sun exceeds the Peloponnesus in size, must have seemed
phantastically large at the time. A century later the diffusion of
Ionian science had transformed the situation for an educated man.
Aristotle takes for granted the belief that the sun is "larger than the
inhabited earth’ (De Anima 428b4). But Heraclitus was living in the
age when serious estimates of stellar distances and magnitudes were
just beginning, when they were weakly grounded and known only to
164 Commentary: XLVI—XLVII (D. 99, 3, 6)
an enlightened few. In referring to the sun going out and being re-
kindled Heraclitus again makes use of a naive point of view. It may
be helpful to cite here a contemporary picture of a peasant mentality
that still sees the world as most men will have seen it in Heraclitus'
day. Solzhenitsyn reports or imagines the following conversation be-
tween his hero, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, and an educated officer.
*Listen, captain, where according to that science of yours does
the old moon go when it's through?’
*Where does it go? What ignorance! It simply isn't visible any
more!’
Shukhov shook his head and laughed:
‘Well, if it’s not visible, how do you know it’s there?’
‘So, according to you,’ said the captain, astonished, ‘we get a
new moon every month?’
‘What’s so strange about that? People are born every day, why
shouldn’t there be a new moon every four weeks?’
‘Pfui!’ The captain spat. ‘I’ve never met such a dumb sailor as
you. So where do you think the old moon goes?’
‘That’s what I’m asking you — where?’ Shukhov grinned.
‘Well, where does it go, tell me?’
Shukhov sighed and said, hardly lisping:
‘At home they used to say that God broke up the old moon for
stars.’
‘What savages!’ The captain laughed. ‘I’ve never heard such a
thing! Do you believe in God, Shukhov?'
‘Why not?’ Shukhov replied, surprised. ‘When you hear Him
thunder, you can’t help believing in Him.’
‘And why do you think God does that, then?’
‘Does what?’
‘Break the moon up into stars?’
‘Well, don’t you understand?’ Shukhov shrugged his shoulders.
‘The stars fall down from time to time and it’s necessary to fill the
gaps.’ (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, tr. G. Aitken (New
York, 1971), p. 111)
It is a view of the world something like this that Heraclitus is pre-
supposing. I see no reason to believe that he uncritically accepted the
naive view of the sun and stars, any more than the popular view of
the Furies or some myth about Zeus setting Arcturus as a watchman
over the stellar Bear. He makes use of traditional belief and imagery
for his own purposes, in this case probably to stress the paradoxical
contrast between the sun’s relatively small appearance and its indis-
Commentary: XLIX (D. 126) 165
pensable function in the cosmos, and certainly to suggest a pattern
of periodic extinctions and rekindling that is both an example and a
paradigm for the measured lighting and quenching of cosmic fire (in
XXXVII, D. 30). The remark about the dependence of daylight on
the sun was probably intended to point to the union of day and night
(XIX, D. 57).
In XLIV (D. 94) the sun is presented as an anthropomorphic being
pursuing his daily path. In XLVIII the sun is again animate, passing
from youth to age; but its vitality is there conceived as fire, kindled
and quenched. When we turn to the Theophrastean doxography, we
find this imagery of kindling and quenching taken literally in a quasi-
mechanical explanation of the sun, moon, and stars, according to
which these phenomena are produced by the gathering and igniting
of bright exhalations in certain celestial bowls or basins (skaphaz). If
we could accept Theophrastus' report as reliable, we would have a
rather detailed account of astronomical and meteorological theories.
But these doctrines are so different from the allusive and ambivalent
manner of Heraclitus in the preserved fragments that I do not think
we can rely upon them for an understanding of his thought. For this
material see Appendix IIA.
XLIX
XLIX (D. 126) Cold warms up, warm cools off, moist parches, dry dampens.
Heraclitus here describes qualitative changes between physical
opposites in the language of felt experience rather than scientific
observation.!94 The verb theretai ‘warm up’ can be used of a person
warming himself by the fire. The word for ‘cools off’, psychetaz,
suggests an application to human souls (psychaz). This presentation
of the cold and the hot as if they were living beings reflects
Heraclitus’ view of the underlying identity between the psyche and
the physical elements. (See below on CII, D. 36.) When Heraclitus
speaks of the cosmos as a living fire, we must take him at his word.
The conception of elemental opposites illustrated here comes from
Miletus; it is found again in the fragments of Anaxagoras and other
fifth-century writers, before being incorporated into the canonical
doctrine of Aristotle (for whom the four elementary bodies are
defined by one member from each of the two pairs: hot-cold, wet-
dry). What Heraclitus expresses, then, is not so much his own thought
as a common presupposition of Greek natural philosophy from Anaxi-
166 | Commentary І (D.12)
mander to Aristotle and beyond.1?5 It is precisely this notion of
pervasive physical change that the Eleatics rejected as false (Melissus
fr. 8.3), while the physicists took it for granted as an obvious truth
of experience (Diogenes fr. 2). Plato has this in mind when he speaks
of a doctrine of continual change and becoming that is held by
Protagoras and Heraclitus and Empedocles ‘and by all the wise men
except Parmenides' (Theaetetus 152E) and which he finds in the
Heraclitean image of the river, where ‘everything moves on and
nothing stands still’ (Cratylus 402 A8). On Plato's reading, the
choice of the opposites cold-warm and moist-dry is merely a tra-
ditional scheme for expressing the thesis of radical flux.
In its historical context, however, it is precisely the change of
opposites into one another that connects this sentence with the frag-
ment of Anaximander and with the tradition illustrated in Anaxa-
goras and Melissus. And it is this archaic notion of the opposites as
opponents or adversaries that underlies Heraclitus' own conception
of War as father and king of all (LXXXIII, D. 53). The four opposites
mentioned here, and the processes they structure, point to the
domain of meteorology, with its processes of evaporation and pre-
cipitation, drought and rainfall, changes in temperature and humidity.
We are reminded of Aristotle's description of the atmospheric cycle
in Heraclitean language:
Now this cycle «of evaporation and precipitation occurs in
imitation of the circle described by the sun. For as the sun passes
laterally back and forth, this cycle moves up and down. One must
think of it as a river flowing in a circle up and down, common to
air and to water. (Meteor. 1.9, 346b35—347a3)
For Heraclitus too these daily and seasonal changes may be
regarded as a cosmic river, whose flux is structured by a system of
which the opposites are the coordinates, and whose balance is main-
tained by its periodicity.
L
L(D.12) As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow
upon them.
This fragment is cited by Cleanthes in a comparison of Heraclitus'
and Zeno's views of the soul. But the text itself contains no reference
to the psyche. For Cleanthes' interpretation see CXIIIB.
The wording offers several oddities. There is the plural form of
Commentary: L (D. 12) 167
‘rivers’: why is one river not enough? And there are four consecutive
dative forms: potamozsin toisin autoisin embainousin, which can in
principle be construed in either of two ways: (1) ‘into the same rivers,
as they step’, as in my translation, or (2) ‘into rivers, as the same
[men] step’. This ambiguity would have been avoided if either bathers
or rivers had been referred to in the singular. Thus the two oddities
of the sentence in fact coincide.
Since elsewhere Heraclitus makes deliberate use of syntactical
ambiguity, it is possible that both constructions are intended here.196
If so, the ambiguity serves to emphasize a parallel between the ident-
ity of the human bathers and that of the rivers; and this parallel
would suggest that the men too remain the same only as a constant
pattern imposed on incessant flow. This is a ‘Heraclitean’ thought
familiar from Plato.
Mortal nature seeks . . . to be forever and to be immortal. But it
can only do so Ьу... leaving something else new behind in place
of the old ... as when a man is called the same from childhood to
old age. He is called the same despite the fact that he does not
have the same hair and flesh and bones and blood and all the body,
but he loses them and is always becoming new. And similarly for
the soul: his dispositions and habits, opinions, desires, pleasures,
pains, fears, none of these remains the same, but some are coming-
to-be, others are lost. (Symposium 207D)
I take it that Plato is here sympathetically developing a Heraclitean
insight.
A second reason for the repeated dative forms would be more
properly stylistic: to suggest the incessant movement of the river
water by the rhythm and assonance of the four words ending in -otsin
or ousin, reinforced by the more explicit repetition in ‘other and other
waters’. (Thus the sentence structure imitates the river: the dative
forms suggest the disappearance of water downstream, whereas the
neuter plural subject hetera kai hetera hydata represents the oncoming
waters from upstream.) Finally, the use of plural forms throughout
implies generality: Heraclitus is referring not just to the Cayster or
Maeander but to all rivers; not to a given moment or bather but to all
moments and all men.
This is the only statement on the river whose wording is unmistak-
ably Heraclitean. It does not deny the continuing identity of the
rivers, but takes this for granted. (For the denial that we can step into
the same river twice, see LI.) Hence the point here concerns neither
the irreversibility of the flow of time, the uniqueness of an individual
168 | Commentary: LI (D. 91)
event or experience, nor the general instability of things. What is
emphasized is that the structure and hence the identity of a given
river remains fixed, despite or even because its substance is constantly
changing. And if the parallel mentioned above is pressed, something
similar is indicated about the structure and identity of individual
human beings. Taken generally, the thought expressed by the river
image reinforces that of the flame: the preservation of structure
within a process of flux, where a unitary form is maintained while its
material embodiment or ‘filling’ is constantly lost and replaced.!97
LI
LI(D.91) Plutarch: [According to Heraclitus one cannot step twice into the
same river, nor can one grasp any mortal substance in a stable condition, but by
the intensity and the rapidity of change it scatters and again gathers. Or rather,
not again nor later but at the same time it forms and dissolves, and approaches
and departs.]
It is curious that the most celebrated and in a sense the most pro-
found saying of Heraclitus, that you cannot step twice into the same
river, is not unmistakably attested in his own words. It was already
a famous saying in Plato's time; and even before Plato, Cratylus must
have been familiar with the paradox, since he tried to cap it with one
of his own. Cratylus denied that you could even step in the river once,
since you are changing too.198
Thus the statement seems to go back to Heraclitus himself. But
Plato does not give a verbatim quotation: ‘Heraclitus says, doesn’t he,
that all things move on and nothing stands still, and comparing
things to the stream of a river he said that you cannot step twice into
the same river’ (Cratylus 402A). Like the formula panta rhei ‘all
things flow’, which occurs later in the dialogue, the remark about
the river seems to be paraphrase rather than quotation.!?? The
citation from Plutarch in LI is similar to Plato's except for the
impersonal form. This is probably as close as we can get to Heraclitus’
own wording, unless we assume with several recent editors that the
famous statement is simply a free rendering of L (D. 12). (Kirk (pp.
374f., 381), Marcovich (p. 206). Cf. Reinhardt, Parmenides, p.
207n.)
But if it is strange that Heraclitus should have expressed himself
twice in such similar terms, it seems even stranger that Cratylus or
some anonymous predecessor should have invented this formula,
which would have been enough to assure Heraclitus’ immortality
Commentary: LII—LIII (D. 84) 169
even if all his other words were lost. Hence I prefer to regard ‘One
cannot step twice’ as an independent fragment, perhaps designed to
complete L (D. 12) by drawing an even more radical conclusion:
since new waters are ever flowing in, it is in fact not possible to step
into the same river twice. Or, more plausibly, the formula of LI may
have been stated first, with L following as its justification: ‘One can
never bathe twice in the same river. For as one steps into [what is
supposed to be] the same rivers, new waters are flowing on.'200
What follows in Plutarch is a long description of the fleeting
character of mortal existence, along the lines of the passage from the
Symposium. In the context of several citations from Heraclitus comes
a series of phrases describing the transitory character of human exist-
ence: ‘It scatters and again gathers. (Or rather, not again nor later but
at the same time) it forms and dissolves, and approaches and departs.’
The words in parenthesis are pretty clearly a Plutarchean interpolation,
inspired by Plato's contrast between Heraclitus and Empedocles in
the Sophist (242D—E). But the three pairs of contrasting verbs are
intended to suggest Heraclitus’ taste for antithesis; and any pair — or
even all three — might reflect Heraclitus’ text. The last pair (‘it
approaches and departs’) would fit the river image perfectly; the
other two suggest processes of cosmology or meteorology. All three
pairs have had their advocates among modern scholars; no one pair
has imposed itself as obviously authentic.?® Our best course is to
admit uncertainty and turn to more reliable information.
LII—LIII
LII-LII (D. 84) Plotinus: [Heraclitus left us to guess what he meant when he
said ... ‘it rests by changing’ and ‘it is weariness to toil at the same tasks and be
«always? beginning'.]
These two brief citations do not give us a firm grip on the text of
Heraclitus. Plotinus is quoting from memory, and we have no way of
telling how far his memory reflects his own reading of Heraclitus or
some more traditional account.?0? Plotinus takes both sentences to
refer to the soul in its blessed condition before the fall into the body;
we are free to take them otherwise.
‘It rests by changing’ can be read as an impersonal construction
with no definite subject, like ‘rest comes through change’. But the
connection between ‘rest’ (anapauesthaz) in LII and ‘weariness’
(kamatos) in LIII, reinforced by the occurrence of these terms as a
170 Commentary: LIV (D. 41)
pair in LXVI (D. 111), suggests that the two citations belong
together. And the interpretation of the second sentence is more
difficult.
The traditional rendering (from Burnet and Diels to Marcovich)
takes the dative tozs autois as referring to the masters for whom one
labors and by whom one is ruled: ‘it is weariness to toil for and be
ruled by the same’ (Kirk). This translation is not impossible; but
neither is it the natural sense of the words. As Bollack-Wismann have
pointed out, the dative with mochthein normally indicates the
object of toil or cause of suffering, not the person for whom one
labors. Hence we expect a translation like ‘to labor at the same tasks’
or ‘to suffer from the same ills’. The difficulty then is to understand
archesthai, which can mean ‘to begin’ as well as ‘to be ruled’. I prefer
the former sense: it is weariness ‘to be (always) beginning’: never to
get to the end of the job but toil continually at the same work and
thus never find rest by changing.
LIV
LIV (D. 41) The wise is one, knowing the plan (gnóme) by which it steers all
things through all (or: how all things are steered through all).
LIV brings to a close the section on cosmology, so far as I have been
able to reconstruct it. (The texts dealing with the soul will be con-
sidered below in the section on death and human destiny, LXXXIV—
CXIV.) Thus, after a long introduction (I-XXXIV), we have some
twenty fragments ‘on the universe’, peri tou pantos (XXXV —LIV),
including one on the logos of the soul (XXXV), whose full meaning
will not be clear until later. In my reconstruction, the cosmological
section begins with a reference to the soul and closes here in LIV
with an anticipation of the doctrine of the cosmic god, to be devel-
oped in the ‘theological’ sections of the work.?0?
There is a textual problem in LIV, which must affect the trans-
lation but does not alter the general interpretation. Two Greek words
are transmitted in garbled form, and no emendation is entirely satis-
factory. The first word is either a relative pronoun (‘which’ or ‘by
which’) or relative adverb (‘in which way’, ‘how’); the second word is
a form of the verb kybernao ‘to steer’, ‘control’, or ‘govern’. I follow
Gigon and Kirk in reading the first word as kokë (or hokét) Show’.2°4
The second word can be restored either as ekybernése ‘it steers’ (with
the tenseless aorist, as often in Heraclitus: see XXVIII, D. 101; LVII,
Commentary: LIV (D. 41) 171
D. 79; and LXXXIII, D. 53); or as kybernatai ‘(things) are steered’.
There is something to be said for both readings, and no clear grounds
for choice between them.?95 In translating one must choose; but in
view of the textual uncertainty I have rendered both possibilities.
This is the third of four fragments that define sophon or to sophon:
‘what is wise’. In XXVII (D. 108) the goal of inquiry is ‘to recognize
(gindskein) what is wise, separated from all’. In XXXVI (D. 50) the
same words sophon esti appear more inconspicuously: ‘it is wise,
listening to the logos, to say in agreement (homologein) that all
things are one’. In the second case, then, what is sophon is proposed
as a norm for human speaking and thinking. By contrast the fourth
occurrence of sophon in CXVIII (D. 32) clearly refers to a wisdom
that is unique, divine, and beyond the reach of men. The sophon of
XXVII (D. 108) admits, as we saw, both human and cosmic readings.
The ‘wise one’ of LIV (D. 41) is, I suggest, similarly ambiguous
between the two conceptions of wisdom, human and divine. The
opening words hen to sophon emphasize the unitary character of
wisdom, in contrast with polymathia, ‘the learning of many things’,
which Heraclitus holds up as a reproach to his predecessors. This
unique wisdom consists in knowledge or rather in mastery, for that
is the original sense of epistasthai: to stand over an activity as ‘expert’
or ‘the one in charge'.?06 Wisdom here is mastery of a gnóme, a form
of knowledge and a plan of action. The noun gnómé occurs only here
and in LV (D. 78, where Heraclitus denies that human nature can
have or keep such ‘insight’). But the cognate verb gmnoskein is regu-
larly used by Heraclitus for the penetrating form of cognition which
most men lack and which his discourse aims to provide.?97 This cos-
mic gnómé corresponds to the universal logos of 1.2 (and cf. XXXVI,
D. 50). The order of the universe is here understood as a work of
cognition and intention, an act of ‘steering all things through all’.
The concept of the cosmos thus leads — by an inference that remains
implicit — to the idea of the cosmic god, ordering the regularity of
the sun and stars, the daylight and the seasons, by an act of cosmic
intelligence.?98 The new Zeus of the philosophers, ‘the wise one
alone' of CXVIII, is regularly pictured as captain or pilot of the uni-
verse. This principle, which Heraclitus elsewhere names 'thunderbolt
(CXIX, D. 64) or luminous Zeus' (XLV, D. 120), is not named in
our fragment; but its role is indicated by the expression kybernan
panta ‘steering all things’. The cognition and the plan will be that of
the universal helmsman, who knows where his course lies and how to
direct his ship along it (gnome hoké kybernan).
,
172 Commentary: LV (D. 78)
The parallel to XXXVI (D. 50), where sophon is offered as a norm
for human understanding, suggests a weaker reading for LIV. The
‘wise one’ may be the human insight into this cosmic plan (epistasthai
gnomén). The stronger reading emerges only when we give epistasthai
its full archaic value ‘to master’, ‘have at one's command’. For only
the captain is master of the art of steering.
The double reading is reflected in the distribution of the two
phrases sophon esti and hen to sophon. The former applies to human
insight in XXXVI, the latter to divine wisdom in CXVIII. When the
former appears in XXVII and the latter here in LIV, both senses are
admissible.
This symmetry reflects an ambivalence in Heraclitus’ conception
of humanity and divinity. LV—LVIII show his reluctance to speak of
human beings as wise; and in this he anticipates Socrates. But the tra-
ditional Greek conception of sophia, enshrined in the legends of the
‘Seven Wise Men’, defined sophos as an attribute of men: of poets,
craftsmen, statesmen, and moral teachers. Heraclitus himself recog-
nizes this when he speaks mockingly of Homer as ‘the wisest (sopho-
teros) of all the Greeks' (XXII, D. 56), and when he implies that
Pythagoras with all his learning had acquired a reputation for wisdom
(sophie, in XXV, D. 129). Xenophanes used the term sophie of his
own accomplishments (fr. 2, 12 and 14). The four fragments in
which sophon occurs suggest an attempt on Heraclitus’ part to appro-
priate the term *wise' to a new use, to designate the goal of his own
thinking and his message to men. In this sense Reinhardt was right
when he said that *Heraclitus' principle, what corresponds in his case
to the apeiron of Anaximander and the on [‘being’| of Parmenides,
is not fire but to sophon’ (Parmenides, p. 205). The ambiguity in this
conception of wisdom is deep and essential, and it cannot be resolved
by distinguishing two different senses of sophon, as some have pro-
posed. The notion of wisdom is so elevated that even the name of
Zeus is scarcely appropriate for it; but it is this same notion that
Heraclitus wants to claim as his own achievement and to offer as a
norm for human thinking in general.
LV
ІУ (D. 78) Human nature (ethos) has no set purpose (gnó mai), but the divine
has.
By translating gndmé as ‘set purpose’ I have short-circuited the inter-
y gg purp
Commentary: LVI-LVHI (D. 82—3, 79, 70) 178
pretation of LV in order to render the predominant thought. Initially,
gnómé here as in LIV must be understood in the ordinary sense of
cognition (opinion, judgment) or intention (plan, purpose) — what a
person ‘has in mind’ either as a belief concerning the facts or as an
aim for action. The word has overtones of public deliberations, where
each orator will speak his ‘mind’, until one ‘opinion’ prevails; and so
in a legal debate ending in a judicial ‘opinion’ or verdict. The term
also applies to memorable sayings or advice, the ‘gnomic’ aphorisms
of the Wise Men.
It is therefore paradoxical to deny opinions and intentions to
human nature — the life of men is largely made of such stuff. The
term for human nature or character (éthos), which indicates a pattern
of habitual behavior and the corresponding state of mind (as in CXIV,
D. 119), gives us no useful clue for resolving the paradox. A better
hint is provided by the cosmic connotations of gnómé in LIV; but
the plural form here makes it unnatural to limit the term to some
privileged insight into the cosmic plan.
The key to understanding LV seems to lie in the stronger reading
of echei as ‘holds оп to’, ‘keeps in control’.299 The utterance is
puzzling only if we take есле! in the weak sense of ‘has’, or ‘possesses’.
Men do in fact have judgments and plans . . . but not for long. New
waters flow over them; their grip is relaxed; their nature and their
habits cannot retain their thoughts and intentions. Beyond the tra-
ditional Greek contrast between divine knowledge and human
folly,?19 LV is a comment on the ambiguity of wisdom implied in
LIV. The character and experience of men, the thoughts and purposes
they have in mind, are partial constituents of the cosmic order: their
own gnómai can be seen as transient aspects of the supreme gnomé
which is the structure of the universe understood as cognition.
LVI—LVIII
LVI(D.82—3) Pseudo-Plato, Hippias Major: [What Heraclitus says is right,
that the most beautiful of apes is ugly in comparison with the race of men... Or
doesn't Heraclitus, whom you cite, say just this, that the wisest of men seems an
ape in comparison to a god, both in wisdom and in beauty and in all the rest?]
LVII (р. 79) Aman is found foolish by a god (daimón) as a child by a man.
LVIII (D. 70) Iamblichus: [Heraclitus thought that human opinions are toys
for children.]
174 | Commentary: LVI—LVIII (D. 82—3, 79, 70)
Of these three closely related sayings, only LVII (D. 79) is stylistic-
ally recognizable as a literal quotation. LVIII is a late and derivative
echo. The passage from the Hippias Major (LVI) is more difficult to
assess. It compares man to an ape rather than a child, and in respect
of beauty as well as wisdom. Since the reference to beauty is moti-
vated by the topic of the dialogue and could in turn have led to the
mention of the ape, some editors regard this not as an independent
citation but an imaginative paraphrase of LVII.?!! But it is at least
equally plausible to read the passage as reflecting a remark quite
different from LVII:
Doesn't Heraclitus say that the wisest of men is an ape in com-
parison to god, as the most beautiful ape is ugly in comparison to
a man?
On this reading both LVI and LVII will have the form of a geo-
metric proportion, which Hermann Frankel recognized as a character-
istic ‘thought pattern’ in Heraclitus. Both illustrate the formula: as X
stands to man (in respect of wisdom or beauty), so man stands to
god.2!2 Although no other fragment shows this schematic form,
several similes have implicitly the same structure: as the sleeper is to
the waking man, so the waking man to one who has insight (1.3, etc.);
as the deaf is to a man of ordinary hearing, so the latter to one who
comprehends the logos (II, D. 34).213 As Frankel suggests, Heraclitus
uses these ratios or analogies in order to project the conception which
is strange to his audience (the divine wisdom, or the human share in
it) by extrapolation from a familiar contrast (child-man, ape-human,
sleeping-waking, deaf-hearing) — while implying that the usual con-
trast becomes negligible in comparison with the third term: divinity
or the wise (to sophon).
The first two words of LVII, anér népios ‘man (is found) foolish’,
can also mean ‘man, a child’; and thus they express the complete
thought in advance, compressed in a tight form that the rest of the
sentence will unfold. The third word ékouse, translated ‘is found’,
means literally ‘has heard’, that is ‘has heard himself called (foolish)’,
according to a common idiom. Given the recurrent theme of perceiv-
ing or hearing (the logos), this idiom is likely to have been chosen
with malice aforethought: in wisdom and capacity for hearing, man
is a mere infant. The last phrase of the clause is also double-tongued:
pros daimonos means (1) ‘(so spoken of) by a god’, and also (2) ‘(a
mere babe) in relation to a god’.
Commentary: LIX (D. 104) and LX —LXI (D. 87, 97) 175
LIX
LIX (0.104) What wit (phrén) or understanding (noos) do they have? They
believe the poets of the people and take the mob as their teacher, not knowing
that ‘the many are worthless’, good men are few.
There may be some specific or local reference here, as in the sarcastic
attack on the Ephesians in LXIV (D. 121). But the comparison with
XIX (D. 57), where Hesiod was described as ‘teacher of most men’,
suggests Heraclitus has the mass of mankind in view. The slight
incoherence in speaking of most men as taking the mob as their
teacher is meaningful: they have in effect no leaders, the poets of the
people (or ‘of the peoples’, with a curious plural form démón) being
merely a reflection of popular ignorance. The mob is both teacher
and pupil, leader and follower at once.
The term noos here recalls the understanding that distinguishes
wisdom from mere accumulation of knowledge (XVIII, D. 40), the
comprehension of ‘what is common to all’ (XXX, D. 114). The word
phrén ‘wit’ or ‘mind’ echoes the theme of ‘thinking’ (phronein) and
especially ‘sound thinking’, ‘good sense’ (sd-phronein).
The final contrast of the many and the few probably looks ahead
to the praise of Bias in LXII (D. 39).
LX—LXI
ІХ (0.87) A fool loves to get excited on any account (or ‘at every word’,
logos).
LXI (D. 97) Dogs bark at those they do not recognize.
The juxtaposition of these two fragments is intended to suggest a
simile or ratio: as dogs react to strangers, so do foolish men to every
logos. (For the pattern, compare VIII (D. 22) with IX (D. 35): as
gold-seekers must dig up a lot of dirt, so lovers of wisdom must wade
through a mass of inquiry.) The clue to LXI is given by the term
‘recognize’ (gindsk6st) with its special sense: the recognition of the
logos, the cosmic structure.?1* Thus the fool or ‘stupid human being
(blax anthropos) in LX stands for men generally in their incapacity
to comprehend. The expressive term blax seems to have meant ‘dull’
or ‘sluggish’, as well as ‘fool’ or ‘imbecile’. (In the form vlakas, with
the general flavor of ‘you idiot’, it remains a popular term of abuse
in Modern Greek.) There may be a pointed contrast between the
>
176 | Commentary: LXII (D. 39)
sluggishness of human nature and the ease (literally, the desire:
philet) with which it is aroused. It is because men in general are
asleep on their feet that they become so suddenly alarmed by the
challenge of a logos. The verb rendered ‘get excited’, eptoésthai, liter-
ally ‘set aflutter’, can mean either ‘terrified, dismayed’, or ‘agitated,
aroused’; both senses are apt.
I assume a play on /ogos: (1) word, statement (*whatever you say
to these fools, they lose their heads!’), and (2) the specifically
Heraclitean /ogos that involves measure or ratio, as in the pattern
illustrated by LX—LXI and more schematically by LVII (D. 79).
Such a ratio is a small-scale exemplification of the cosmic measures
'according to which all things come to pass'. Thus the fool who gets
excited or alarmed over every bit of news, is (like the dog who barks
at a strange face) a figure for the man who comprehends neither
Heraclitus’ discourse nor the cosmic pattern it reflects, but will be
roused to some inappropriate response — alarm, disgust, or sheer irri-
tation — by his own failure to recognize what he is confronted with.
LXII
LXII (D. 39) In Priene lived Bias son of Teutames, who is of more account
(logos) than the rest.
Here again there must be a play on logos. The surface meaning is
‘esteem’ or ‘renown’. But Heraclitus seems to have shown his own
esteem for Bias by quoting his famous logos or saying (above, LIX,
D. 104): the fame of the sage is inseparable from that of his *word'.
It is possible that here, as in LXI, we are expected to recall the
deeper sense of logos as well. The word play will then contain some
hint of the cosmic pattern expressed in geometric proportions — for
there is after all only one order. And on what term could one play
more meaningfully than on logos itself, the word for language and
for cosmic structure?
In pursuing this clue, we can start from the fact that Bias is
regarded with exceptional favor; as Diogenes says in quoting LXII,
*even Heraclitus who was so hard to please praised him particularly"
(1.88). Bias was a leading citizen of the Ionian city of Priene (not far
from Ephesus), who lived a generation or two before Heraclitus. The
justice of Priene, represented by Bias, was proverbial in his own life-
time.?!5 Herodotus praises him for the good advice he gave to the
Ionians after their conquest by Cyrus: to combine forces and settle
Commentary: LXIII (D. 49) 177
in the west, in Sardinia (1.170.1). As the popular legend of the Seven
Wise Men took shape, Bias was one of the four (with Thales, Solon,
and Pittacus) whose names appeared on all the different lists. Among
the sayings associated with his name, Aristotle quotes the celebrated
line ‘power will reveal the man’ (arché andra deixei), and the cautious
counsel ‘love your friends as if they are to become your enemies, and
hate your enemies as if they are to become your friends'.?16 The
view underlying both these sayings is expressed in the aphorism
Diogenes ascribes to him: ‘most men are worthless (or ‘vile’, kako:y'.?17
If it is indeed this saying that is quoted in LIX and alluded to here,
it is natural to connect Heraclitus’ high regard for Bias with the judg-
ment there expressed. No doubt Heraclitus shared Bias’ harsh judg-
ment of the common run of men. The sharpest statement of this is
XCVII (D. 29), where we find something more than an aristocrat’s
contempt for the mob. While the many ‘sate themselves like cattle’,
the saving grace of the excellent few is precisely their choice of ever-
living glory, ‘one thing in exchange for all’. (Cf. XL, D. 90, and the
parallels cited above, p. 000.) The opposition in LXII between the
single individual Bias, who by his justice and wisdom merited an
esteem (/ogos) so much greater than the rest as to appear semi-divine,
and the mass of mankind as characterized in his saying (logos) — this
antithesis exemplifies in human terms that proportion (logos) be-
tween the one and the many, between fire and all the rest, that struc-
tures the order of the universe.
And in fact Bias achieved, in the most literal sense, ‘ever-renewed
fame among mortals’ (kleos aenaon thnéton), according to the terms
of XCVII (D. 29). Not only was he widely remembered as wise judge
and councillor, but his city dedicated a shrine in his honor, the
Teutameion, making him the object of a hero cult after his death.?!8
The fact that the shrine bore the name of his father may account for
the emphatic position of the patronymic in the center of LXII. (Con-
trast the absence of a patronymic in the favorable reference to
Hermodorus in LXIV, D. 121.)
LXIII
LXIII (D. 49) Опе (man) is ten thousand, if he is the best.
The opposition suggested in LXII is expressed here in numerical
terms. In Greek ‘ten thousand’ (myrioz) is regularly used to mean
‘countless’, ‘innumerable’.
178 | Commentary: LXIV (D. 121)
As Bollack-Wismann have pointed out, of the two citations that
preserve the essential clause ‘if he is best’, neither one includes the
personal reference ‘for me’. (See texts 98 (a) and (c) in Marcovich,
pp. 515f.) The alternative form ‘one is ten thousand for me’ was
proverbial by Cicero's time and came to be assigned to Heraclitus.
(Marcovich texts 98 (b), (e) and (el).) Modern editors have been ill-
advised to combine the two versions in a composite text that is not
represented in any ancient source. The result is not only methodo-
logically unsound; it trivializes the thought of LXIII by expressing
the cosmic ratio as a personal opinion.
LXIV
LXIV (D. 121) What the Ephesians deserve is to be hanged to the last man,
every one of them, and leave the city to the boys, since they drove out their best
man, Hermodorus, saying ‘Let no one be the best among us; if he is, let him be so
elsewhere and among others.'
Nothing more is actually known of Hermodorus. It is natural to
assume (as later authors do) that Heraclitus is referring to a contem-
porary event. Strabo, Pliny, and the jurist Pomponius report that
after his exile Hermodorus went to Rome to help the decemvirs com-
pose (or interpret) the Twelve Tables, the fundamental document of
early Roman law. Pliny even says there was a public statue dedicated
to him in the forum. Although it may explain the statue, the story
itself is not credible: the Twelve Tables were not published until 449
B.C., which is a generation too late for a contemporary of Heraclitus.
But the legend shows that LXIV was well known in Rome; it is quoted
in Latin by Сісего.219
Hermodorus and Bias are the only two persons mentioned by
Heraclitus with praise; although their destinies were different, their
qualities must have been similar in his eyes. The shame of the
Ephesians is just that they, unlike the men of Priene, were unable to
profit from their most profitable citizen. The rare word onéistos
‘best’, which here occurs twice, is cognate with the verb oninémi ‘to
profit or benefit (someone); it must have been chosen to bring out
the irrational character of the Ephesians' action. They are deliberately
doing harm to themselves by depriving their city of its most valuable
asset.??0 And Heraclitus' formulation of this point is even more
subtle: if the Ephesians applied their principle recursively (‘let no
one of us be the best’), they would end by expelling every citizen to
Commentary: LXV—LXVI (D. 44, 33) 179
the last man, and thus deliberately give themselves *what they
deserve’.
The motive which Heraclitus attributes to his fellow citizens is a
paradigm of human folly, for the principle they appeal to — let no
one among us be the one who excels — is a rejection of the cosmic
proportion that balances one thing (fire, gold, everlasting glory)
against everything else. The egalitarian hostility towards unique excel-
lence is more than a political mistake: it ignores the role which unity
plays in the structure of the world as in the safety of the city. In the
polis this principle of intelligent unity (hen to sophon) is represented
both by the ‘shared’ order of the law (in XXX, D. 114, and LXV, D.
44), and by the human capacity to grasp the common interest and
enforce the requirements of justice. Heraclitus’ political tastes were
no doubt conservative, but that is not the issue here. What he depicts
is the self-destructive action of a community that rejects the leader-
ship of its ablest citizens.??!
This long sentence is structured by antithesis and implicit propor-
tionality. The basic contrast between one man who has been driven
out (despite his merits), and all who are left (and who, if they got
what they deserve, would all hang) is reinforced by the suggestion
that it is they who ought ‘to leave the city’. The secondary contrast
opposes the useful man to those whose action is self-destructive.
Their uselessness is expressed by a familiar proportion in a new form:
as citizens the grown men of Ephesus are even worse than boys!
LXV—LXVI
LXV (D. 44) The people (démos) must fight for the law as for their city wall.
LXVI (D. 33) It is law also to obey the counsel (boule) of one.
These two references to the law (nomos) echo the thought of XXX
(D. 114): the dependence of human laws on a “divine one’. In CIV
(D. 43) Heraclitus will compare violence or lawlessness (hybris) to a
house on fire. In LXV the image of the defenders on the city wall
defines the same threat, the need for law as a basis for civic life and
the only protection of the weak against the strong. In emphasizing
the rational necessity (chré) for the common people (démos) to pre-
serve the law, Heraclitus appeals not to divine sanction or traditional
obligations but to a recognition of their own vital interests.
We know nothing of the precise political situation in Ephesus, per-
180 Commentary: LXV—LXVI (D. 44, 33)
haps under moderate democracy established by the Persians immedi-
ately after the disastrous Ionian revolt of 499—494 В.С.222 But we
can understand the ideological background in terms of Solon’s
analysis of a political crisis in Athens about a century earlier:
Thus the public evil comes home to every man,
The gates of his courtyard will no longer hold it out,
It leaps over the high wall and finds him in every case,
Even if he flees inside, to hide in the nook of his chamber.
These things does my heart bid me to teach the Athenians,
How the greatest evils to the city are the gift of Lawlessness
(Dysnomie);
While Lawfulness (Eunomié) makes everything orderly and right,
And she frequently fetters the feet of those who are unjust.
Lawfulness smoothes what is rough, puts a stop to excess (koros)
and makes dim the deed of violence (hybris).
It withers the flowers that bloom from disaster and folly (até).
It makes crooked judgments (dikat) straight, and humbles the
work of arrogant pride.
And it puts an end to acts of civil strife. (fr. 3.26—37 Diehl)
Heraclitus must have approved of the political principles of Solon, his
emphasis on the rule of law and his conception of social justice as a
measure (metron) or balance between unequal parties. The conflict
between the rich and the poor, of the sort that Solon confronted, is
probably alluded to in Heraclitus’ antithesis of ‘satiety’ or excess
(koros) and ‘need’ (chresmosyné in CXX, D. 65) or ‘hunger’ (limos
in LXVII, D. 111).223 Solon’s image of the public disaster that leaps
over the walls of a man's house to seek him out in the privacy of his
bedroom illustrates perfectly (and probably influenced) Heraclitus’
conception of the law which is ‘common to all’ and whose preservation
is as vital as the city wall which protects the inhabitants from pillage
and massacre.
Heraclitus goes beyond Solon in grounding this interest in law and
civic concord upon a cosmic basis in ‘the divine one’. And this reliance
upon the one leads Heraclitus to emphasize the role of the outstand-
ing individual in a way that is not theoretically articulated in Solon's
political poetry, but exemplified in his career as statesman and law-
giver. Heraclitus has, in effect, expanded Solon’s political theory to
include Solon's own practice of enlightened leadership, which is here
articulated as a principle of universal unity. His reminder that it is
also law ‘to obey the counsel (boule) of one’ is an echo of the ‘wise
one’ of LIV (D. 41), where the term boulé (‘plan, advice’) here is
Commentary: LXVII (D. 110—11) 181
paralleled by the gnomé (‘insight, judgment") that controls the cos-
mos. The most familiar of all the overtones of the phrase ‘the boule
of one’ is ‘the plan of Zeus’ (Dios boule) announced іп the proem to
the Iliad, the plan and power of the supreme deity that dominates
the entire еріс.224
Several features of LXVI (D. 33) call for comment. Boulé here
may signify (1) deliberation and (2) the council, as a constitutional
body exercising some executive power, both in oligarchies and in
democracies. Perhaps the thought is as follows. It is law to obey the
Boule, the city council. But the role of the Boule is to deliberate, to
make intelligent plans for the interests of the community. If such
wise counsel (boule) is offered by a single man, it is no less the
expression of what is common and lawful.
The final word henos ‘of one’ presents the grammatical ambiguity
that is Heraclitus' stylistic signature. If this form is construed as
masculine, the phrase means ‘the advice of one man’; taken as neuter,
it gives us ‘the plan of one (principle)’. The political application pre-
supposes the former reading, the cosmic allusion the latter. The sen-
tence can thus be read as an elliptical résumé of Heraclitus’ political
theory: law is what is common (XXX, LXV); what is common is
thinking (XXXI); sound thinking is wisdom (XXXII); wisdom is the
one (CXVIII) and the recognition of the cosmic plan (LIV). Hence it
is law to follow this unified plan, even when it is represented by the
wisdom of a single man.
LXVII
LXVII (D. 110—11) It is not better for human beings to get all they want. It is
disease that has made health sweet and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest.
These two sentences provide the point of connection between what
has been called Heraclitus’ ‘ethics’, that is to say his view of human
folly and wisdom, and the doctrine of opposites which is generally
recognized as his central thought. I shall first argue that the two sen-
tences are to be read together.?25
There is a familiar rhetorical device in early Greek poetry and
prose, strangely dubbed a ‘Priamel’, which is illustrated in a poem of
Sappho that begins ‘some say a troop of cavalry is the fairest thing,
some say foot-soldiers, others a fleet of ships. . . but I say it is what-
ever one loves’ (fr. 16 Lobel-Page). One of the best known examples
182 Commentary: LXVII (D. 110—11)
of this scheme is an elegiac couplet cited by Aristotle as the Delian
inscription:?26
The fairest is what is most just, the best of all is health;
But the sweetest thing of all is to obtain what one loves (eraz).
Aristotle tells us these verses were inscribed in the propylaeum to the
shrine of Leto in Delos; they thus formed a kind of Ionian sister to
the inscription ‘Know thyself’ at the entrance to Apollo's temple in
Delphi. The same couplet is preserved, almost in the same words, in
the verses of Theognis (255f.). A prose version of the second verse is
also found among the sayings ascribed to Thales: ‘The sweetest thing
is to obtain what you desire (epithymeis).??7 Whether Heraclitus
knew this sentiment as a saying of Thales or, more likely, as an
inscription at Delos, the first sentence of LXVII seems intended pre-
cisely as a denial of this familiar adage: 'It is not better for men to
get whatever they want.' Now the traditional formula contains the
word ‘sweetest’ (hédiston or, in Theognis, terpnotaton). And this
thought is continued in Heraclitus’ second sentence: ‘It is disease that
has made health sweet and good.' Hence it is only when the two sen-
tences are taken as a unit that their polemical reference to the con-
ventional word of wisdom is fully expressed.
The three pairs of opposites, each consisting of one positive term
(health, satiety, rest) and one negative (disease, hunger, weariness),
are thus introduced in a denial that what is good (or ‘better’) for
human beings is getting what they want. The three pairs illustrate a
common pattern of strong contrast between positive and negative
terms, with some kind of causal dependency of the former on the
latter. In each case it is opposition that is obvious, while reflection
is required to perceive the causal link that explains why it is not
better for human beings to get everything they desire.
In rejecting the traditional aphorism Heraclitus points to a unity
which conventional wisdom ignores. What passes for wisdom isa
form of folly deeply grounded in the structure of desire itself. The
negative experiences of disease, weariness, and hunger are necessary
conditions for the enjoyment of health, rest, and satiety. The first
pair of contraries differs from the other two in that disease is not a
physical pre-condition for health in the way that exertion and hunger
are directly required for resting and satisfying one's appetite. But it
is only the contrast with sickness that permits us to recognize health
as something 'sweet and good'. Thus it would not be better, it would
not even be good, for human beings to get all they want. The struc-
ture of desire is irrational in that it is potentially self-destructive; if
Commentary: LXVIII (D. 102) 183
we got everything we desired, nothing would be desirable. Just as the
wish for an end to strife would, if fulfilled, destroy the cosmic order
that depends upon opposition (LXXXI, D. A22), so the wish that all
human desires be satisfied would, if fulfilled, destroy the order of
human life by eliminating desire and depriving us of our conception
of what is good and precious.??8
According to the insight of LXVII human desire is inevitably
imprisoned within the structure of opposition. The opposites appear
as limitations on the human condition, natural deficiencies in the
human point of view. (Hence the opening word is anthrépois: ‘for
human beings'.) From this irrationality there is no escape except
through wisdom: dominating what is unreasonable by comprehending
it in a larger unity. And the first step is to recognize the positive con-
tribution made by the negative term in the link that unites them. For
then these oppositions can be seen for what they are, as a mirror of
the universal pattern manifest in the alternate kindling and quenching
of cosmic fire. So the unity in opposition is not only the constitutive
feature of our mode of being as human animals, where need and
gratification, hope and fear, joy and grief are bound together. A simi-
lar structure will recur at other levels: to link (by antithesis) human
experience to that of different animals (LXX —LXXII), to link the
fate of mortals to that of immortals (XCII, D. 62), and to link cosmic
powers to one another (as in the unity of night and day, XIX, D. 57).
LXVIII
LXVIII (D. 102) Scholia to Iliad: [Heraclitus says that for god all things are
fair and good and just, but men have taken some things as unjust, others as just.]
As Bywater recognized, and Wilamowitz and others have pointed out
since, the wording here is that of some anonymous Homeric com-
mentator, perhaps a Stoic, and we cannot know how well it reflects
what Heraclitus said.??9 The second clause can be seen as an extension
of the thought of LXVII to the moral distinctions between just and
unjust, right and wrong. Heraclitus cannot have meant, as the
scholiast's wording might suggest, that the distinction is man-made in
the sense of being arbitrary or groundless. This is excluded by the doc-
trine of XXX (D. 114) that human laws and moral codes (nomoz) are
the expression of cosmic order. The authentically Heraclitean thought
(known from LXIX, and imperfectly expressed in the present text) is
that men cannot define justice except by specifying its violation: the
184 Commentary: LXVIII (D. 102)
city determines what is just by making laws that prohibit and punish
actions recognized as unjust. The conceptual point is a general one.
As Socrates (or Plato) said, the knowledge of opposites is one and the
same. But justice is a peculiarly ‘negative virtue’ in that instances of
injustice are more striking.
Less clear is the statement that such moral distinctions are can-
celled or non-existent from the divine point of view. It is difficult to
extract from this a thought that is uncontaminated by Platonic or
Stoic conceptions of providence and universal harmony. But we do
know that Heraclitus conceived of a hidden fitting-together of oppo-
sites in which conflict and justice would coincide (LXXVIII—
LXXXII). It is only in this perspective that he could have asserted
that ‘for god all things are fair and good and just’. It is not that the
human distinctions cease to have validity — for the only validity they
ever had was validity for men. The distinction between rest and
weariness will not disappear from the point of view of divine wisdom;
wisdom will recognize this distinction for what it is: an essential
feature of the human condition.239 And the same must be true for
the distinction between right and wrong. Its validity for human
society is not in question. But this antithesis, like any other, is con-
tained within a total order that is itself designated as just — and then
the term ‘just’ is used in such a way that nothing can actually be un-
just. Notice that there is still some meaning attached to the term
*unjust' at the level of cosmic order, although here the term has no
true application. The violation of justice in this sense would have to
be, per impossibile, the violation of the world order, as in the contrary-
to-fact hypothesis of the sun diverging from his ordained path. Even
for a god this would not be just and fair and good!
We must separate two questions that are confounded in the word-
ing of LXVIII: (1) the general question whether it is valid and neces-
sary for men in society to distinguish between right and wrong, to
have some moral or legal code, and (2) the specific question whether
in any given society (sixth-century Ephesus, or twentieth-century
America) this distinction is correctly drawn. Heraclitus' doctrine of
opposites is properly concerned only with the former question: all
human laws are nourished by the divine (XXX, D. 114). But from a
recognition that some established and generally respected system of
nomos or ‘law’ is required for any society to survive, it is possible to
argue that whatever distinctions are in fact recognized ought to be
respected. This conservative reasoning (which is roughly that of
Protagoras and Herodotus, and later of Hobbes) may have tempted
Commentary: LXIX (D. 23) 185
Heraclitus. But it is not clear that he yielded to it in his defense of
nomos. In questions of religious cult and belief he was anything but
a conservative.
LXIX
LXIX (D. 23) If it were not for these things, they would not have known the
name of Justice (Diké).
*They' here are human beings generally and Greeks in particular (since
the fragment plays upon the sense of dikë in Greek). ‘These things’
probably refer to acts of injustice (adikia), violations of the law, with
their resulting penalties and punishment.??! Heraclitus seems to be
alluding to the old, but not obsolete use of dikë for the decision or
‘indication’ of a judge.232 The dikë may be either (1) the decision
itself, characterized as ‘straight’ or ‘crooked’ if the judge is thought
to have ‘pointed’ in the right direction or deviated from the true
course of judgment, or (2) the punishment or compensation decided
upon, as in the phrase didonaz dikén ‘to pay the penalty’, literally ‘to
give what was indicated (as compensation)’. And dikë also comes to
be used (3) for the lawsuit or the trial itself. Thus the word properly
designates ‘justice’ as the principle for settling legal disputes, the prin-
ciple personified by Hesiod as daughter of Zeus, who watches over
lawsuits and reports to her father when the ruling princes ‘judge
crooked sentences (dikas)’ (Works and Days 256—64; cf. 219—24).
Although the term also comes to mean lawful conduct and the virtue
of justice, the original connections with lawcourts and punishment
remain prominent. So when Diké is invoked as guarantor of the sun’s
course in XLIV (D. 94), the point is that the sun would be found out
and punished if he were to transgress his lawful measures.
The thought of LXIX seems then to be the conceptual dependence
of justice upon the existence of injustice and legal disputes. But the
thought is expressed not in terms of concepts but in terms of the
name by which Justice is known. If there were no judgments and
penalties, men could not know or understand the word dikê that
denotes them. But then they would not know the name of Justice.
LXX-LXXII
LXX (D. 61) The sea is the purest and foulest water: for fishes drinkable and
life-sustaining; for men undrinkable and deadly.
186 Commentary: LXX -LXXII (D. 61, 9, 13, 37)
LXXI (D. 9) Aristotle: [As Heraclitus says, ‘Asses prefer garbage (syrmata,
sweepings? chaff?) to gold.']
LXXII (D. 13 and 37) Clement and Columella: [Heraclitus says that ‘swine
delight in mire rather than clean water’; chickens bathe in dust.]
These three fragments, only the first of which is preserved in Herac-
litus’ own words, contrast the needs or preferences of mankind with
those of another species: fishes, donkeys, pigs, perhaps also chickens
and cows.?33 The relationship between opposites here thus differs
from that in LXVII—LXIX, where the terms (health-sickness, justice-
injustice, and the like) were both defined within the framework of
human experience. Here the human point of view is restricted to one
member of an opposing pair. (The reference to men is explicit in
LXX, implicit in the other two.)
We may safely reject the moralizing interpretation of LXXI and
LXXII, which construes the inter-species comparison as a rhetorical
device for assimilating the preferences of most men to the taste of
asses and pigs.??* This moral judgment is expressed in XCVII (D. 29),
where two forms of human life are contrasted, one of which is com-
pared to that of beasts. But the striking element in LXXI and LXXII
is precisely the concrete description of animal behavior. There is an
old and fairly constant tradition which utilizes such descriptions to
make a point about inter-species relativism. The most elaborate state-
ment is that which Plato puts in the mouth of Protagoras.
I know many things which are unprofitable to human beings, both
food and drink and medicine and much more, and others which are
profitable. And some which are neither profitable nor unprofitable
to human beings, but to horses; and some to oxen only; others to
dogs. But some are good for none of these, but for trees. And some
are good for the roots of trees, but bad for the buds, like manure
.. . Thus olive oil is very bad for all plants and quite inimical to
the hair of all animals except man, but it is an aid to human hair
and to the whole body. So complex and varied is the good, that
even in this case what is good for the external use of the human
body is quite bad for internal use. And hence all doctors forbid
sick persons to take olive oil in their food, except in very slight
quantities. (Protagoras 334A—C)
This is a Platonic development of the thought expressed in LXX.
There are echoes both in an early and in a late treatise of the Hippo-
cratic Corpus.235 Finally, a sceptic like Sextus will include both the
Heraclitean examples of sea water (LXX) and pigs bathing in the mire
Commentary: LX X —LXXII (D. 61, 9, 13, 37) 187
(LXXII) and Plato's point about olive oil among the standard argu-
ments for suspending judgment. The argument is designed to show
that ‘the same objects do not produce the same impressions (phan-
tasiat) because of the difference between animals'.?36 Sextus’ point
is that *we can say how the object is regarded by us, but not how it is
in nature', since we cannot sit in judgment between our own im-
pressions and those of the other animals (1.59).
Thus Sextus finds the same thought in LXXII as in LXX. And this
inter-species comparison is also the point of LXXI according to
Aristotle, our only source in this case: ‘The pleasure of a horse and a
dog is different from that of a man.’
I assume, then, that we may treat LXX—LXXII as a group, though
it is only in the first instance that we have the assurance of an auth-
entic text.
The thought of LXX is built upon an observation so familiar as to
escape ordinary notice. Despite the necessity for human life of an
adequate supply of water, the most conspicuous form of water for
those who inhabit a coastal town, namely the sea, is not only useless
for this purpose but actually dangerous. For other forms of life, how-
ever, the sea is not a threat but a home; for them, sea water is truly
water, the element of life.
Thus we are both right and wrong to perceive the sea as water. For
it is water in physical or cosmic terms. (Cf. XXXVIII—XXXIX, D.
31.) But it cannot function as water for the vital needs of men. This
is a limitation on human nature, however, not a defect of the sea. Its
virtue as water is manifest in the life of fishes.
This thought is articulated by three pairs of contrasting adjectives,
each with its own resonance. The physiological contrast between man
and fish is mentioned in second place, as comment on the first pair
of terms, more suggestive and more obscure: the sea is ‘water, purest
and foulest'. The meaning of this initial opposition cannot be restricted
to the physiological contrast that follows: the first pair of opposites
is not subordinated to the contrast between men and fishes. There is
an exclusively human dimension in which the sea is both pure and
foul. It serves in certain rites of purification as the universal cleanser
(as in Iliad 1.314£.); but it is defiled or polluted (miaros) by all the
garbage of harbor and ships, by excrement and carcasses of man and
beast. This contrast (and union) of the clean and the foul, the pure
and the polluted, is recalled in the reference to swine in LXXII, for
whom mire is better than clean (katharos) water, and in the compari-
son of purification by blood to washing with mud in CXVII (D. 5).
188 Commentary: LX X LXXII (D. 61, 9, 13, 37)
The contrast between men and fish is expressed in the third pair
of adjectives as an opposition between life and death: the sea is both
preserver (sotérion) and destroyer (olethrion). Beyond the basic
opposition of drinkable-undrinkable, Heraclitus thus hints at a broader
antithesis: the sea, so necessary for the life of fish, is a constant threat
and often a tomb for men who sail upon it.
There were probably similar overtones in the original text of LXXI
and LXXII. Thus the pure-impure contrast is alluded to in LXXII; in
LXXI the mention of gold may have been intended to invoke its sym-
bolic value (cf. VIII, D. 22 and XL, D. 90); just as the word for 'gar-
bage’ or ‘sweepings’ (syrmata) may be echoed in the description of
the cosmos as a heap of sweepings (sarma) in CXXV (D. 124). With-
out a full and literal text, however, it would be idle to pursue such
hints.
In LXXI and LXXII the contrast is a matter of natural preference
or pleasure (pigs in mud, asses in garbage or the like), whereas in LXX
it is a question of life and death.??7 But in all three cases we have the
opposition between a negative and a positive term: an object of pur-
suit (haireton) and one of avoidance (pheukton). And the point in
each case is that what has negative value for human beings (sea water,
mud, garbage) is a positive term of desire, delight, or vitality for
another kind of creature. There is surely something here about the
underlying unity of opposites, but the thought is not so vague, naive,
or confused as it is often made to арреаг.238 There is no reason to
make Heraclitus conclude that life and death are the same because
the sea can be source of both, or that delight and disgust are identical
because both reactions might be provoked by the same object in dif-
ferent subjects. The trivial reading of Heraclitus' doctrine here is that
there is no accounting for tastes. The fallacious reading is that
because one man's meat is another man's poison there is no difference
between meat and poison. The confused reading is that all things are
inherently contradictory.?39 If we wish to ascribe an intelligent doc-
trine to Heraclitus in some coherent connection with LXVII—LXIX,
these texts provide the basis for a valid generalization: in an opposed
pair the negative term, as defined by human needs and desires, is
never wholly negative. Just as in LXVII—LXIX a term like hunger
was noted as a necessary condition or point of contrast for the posi-
tive experience of satiety, so here the negative term for human beings
is revealed as a positive term for another form of life.
It is this positive interpretation of the principle of negativity that
has made the thought of Heraclitus so congenial to Hegel and his fol-
Commentary: LXXIII (D. 58) 189
lowers. For there is indeed something like an anticipation of Hegelian
dialectic in Heraclitus’ treatment of the opposites. In the examples
just considered, this dialectic of opposites is focussed on the partiality
of the human perspective. (See the great summary statement in
CXXIV, D. 10: ‘graspings: wholes and not wholes’.) It is not that we
are mistaken in preferring sweet drinking water and clean baths, any
more than we are wrong to prefer health to sickness and satiety to
hunger. But the doctrine of opposites is, among other things, an
attempt to attain a larger vision by recognizing the life-enhancing
function of the negative term, and hence comprehending the positive
value of the antithesis itself.
LXXIII
LXXIII (D. 58) Doctors who cut and burn [and torture their patients in every
way] complain that they do not receive the reward they deserve [from the
patients] , acting as they do.240
Despite the textual uncertainty, this sentence clearly points to the
positive or beneficial aspects of something generally perceived as
negative and destructive. In a phrase that seems to have become pro-
verbial, Heraclitus refers to the paradoxical harm-for-the-sake-of-
benefit exemplified in the fearsome medical practice of cutting and
cautery: temnein kai kaiein, ‘the twin horrors of pre-anaesthetic sur-
gery'.?*! The primary point is that doctors do (or at least seek to do)
good to their patients by inflicting what is in an obvious sense grave
damage or harm. Such suffering, normally regarded as an evil to be
avoided (pheukton), is accepted by sick men as a benefit (hazreton).
Both positive and negative terms are here defined by reference to
human needs and experience, as in LXVII—LXIX. But the ‘unity of
opposites' (that is, the positive value of the negative term) is seen
from a new point of view. There is an implicit contrast between what
is beneficial for the healthy man and what is beneficial for the sick,
and hence a structural parallel to the inter-species comparisons of
LXX-—LXXII.
What is perplexing, and obscured by textual difficulties, is Herac-
litus’ reference to the doctors’ reward. On one reading, doctors
demand a fee when in fact they deserve nothing. This version ascribes
the negative evaluation of surgery to Heraclitus himself, which is un-
likely on philosophical grounds. The reading accepted here makes the
doctors complain that they do not get the fee they deserve. This is
190 Commentary: LXXIV (D. 59)
better attested in the tradition (as Kirk has shown), and gives an
excellent sense. The patients, suffering the torments of the damned
at the hands of their ‘benefactors’, are unwilling to pay the exorbitant
fee requested. The doctors are unsatisfied with what they get, and
insist upon the high value of their services. This ‘strife’ between doc-
tors and patients neatly reflects the opposition between harm and
benefit inherent in such cures.
The worst puzzle is the last phrase in the Greek text: ta agatha kai
tas nosous ‘the good [consequences] and the diseases’. I follow Kirk
in regarding this as a corrupt gloss.2#2 Ending LXXIII with the
emphatic phrase ‘acting as they do’ (tauta ergazomeno:) leaves it
suspended between the neutral comment ‘they claim high fees for
what they do’ and the malicious one: ‘they have the cheek to claim
such fees for torturing their patients".
LXXIV
LXXIV (D. 59) The path of the carding wheels is straight and crooked.
This text of LXXIV is in doubt, and its interpretation has been the
subject of controversy quite out of proportion to the philosophical
issues at stake.
The first problem is to identify the instrument Heraclitus is refer-
ring to, and to see in what sense its path is both straight and crooked
(or twisted, skolzé). The word for the instrument or for its user, trans-
lated here as ‘carding wheels’, seems to be corrupt in the manuscripts
and has been emended in two or three different ways.243
Such textual diversity shows how uncertain any interpretation
must be. I follow Marcovich in assuming some reference here to a
circular carding instrument set with thorns or spikes, for Herodotus
tells us that such an instrument was used by Croesus for inflicting a
painful death.244 Since the torture instrument is referred to by the
name from carding (knaphos), it must have been related to some
equipment used in the operation by which hairs of raw wool, after
an initial washing, are combed, disentangled, and regularized so that
they are ready for spinning into thread. Carding proper (knaptein) in
the sense assumed here is a more elaborate alternative to the process
of combing the wool by hand (xaznein).245
The ancient sources speak of thorns, spines or spikes (akantha:)
set in a circular roller (gnaphos or knaphos); and the passage in
Herodotus suggests an instrument large and strong enough for a man
Commentary: LXXIV (D. 59) 191
to be broken on, as on the rack. We do not know the form of the
ancient instrument. I shall describe instead a modern instrument
which serves the same purpose and illustrates Heraclitus’ point rather
vividly. This is a machine now used for carding in Andritsaina, a
mountain village of the western Peloponnese. Today its frame is made
of steel and it is driven by electricity; but perhaps the principle is
simple enough to reproduce the general practice of antiquity. The
striking feature of this contemporary carding machine is that it con-
sists of a fixed half-drum, roughly semicircular in shape, around
which are set a number of movable rollers, of two alternating sizes,
each of which is furnished with metal spikes or teeth. (Note that
Marcovich's text restores gnaphon in the plural for paleographical
reasons; but the plural form requires some explanation.) The rough
wool is fed into the machine at one end of the drum and, as the
rollers turn, it passes under a large roller and then over a small one,
and then again under the next large one, and so on over and under
the wheels until it emerges fully combed at the other end of the
drum. There is a direct, intuitive sense in which the path of the wool
through this machine is both straight and crooked: its mean course
around the drum is a smooth curve, like a semi-circle, but its actual
path is continually up and down, over and under the successive rollers,
in a serpentine or zig-zag movement.
It would be foolish to claim that this modern machine is a replica
of the instrument Heraclitus had in mind. But his carding wheels
might have worked in this way, turned by hand, perhaps, or by water
power like а т.246 I cannot imagine a simpler machine that would
both fit the ancient texts and illustrate Heraclitus' point. In any case,
our machine requires no fancy screw or cochlias (as Hippolytus
assumes in his citation of LXXIV, probably on the basis of some
more sophisticated device for pressing cloth rather than carding). All
that is needed is a source of rotary motion, as in a mill for grinding
grain. Whether driven by water power or by hand, it would not
require much adjustment to transform this equipment into a fearful
instrument of torture — though the man would of course be dragged
over the rollers and not, like the wool, between them.
Assuming some such literal sense for LXXIV, what is its philo-
sophic point? The text is cited by Hippolytus following LXXIII (D.
58) which (on his interpretation) shows that good and evil or medical
treatment and disease come to the same thing; and he next cites CIII
(D. 60): ‘The way up and down, one and the same.’ The term hodos,
‘way’ or ‘path’, occurs both in LXXIV and in СШ.247 Modern
192 Commentary: LXXIV (D. 59)
interpreters have taken this as one more example of how *what are
conventionally counted as irreconcilable opposites are found to
inhere at one and the same moment in the same activity', or in the
same object.248 Such an attribution of contrary predicates to the
same subject led some to suppose that Heraclitus had, in effect,
intended to deny the principle of contradiction.?*? Strictly speaking,
he cannot have done so, since the principle itself was not formulated
before the poem of Parmenides, and then only indirectly; the first
explicit formulation (in terms of the incompatibility of contraries) is
in Plato's Republic. But that is not the point in any case. Of course it
is no contradiction to assert that the path of wool through the carding
machine (whatever its exact construction) is straight in one respect
but crooked in another. But that is also not a very interesting proof
that these opposites are ‘one and the same’. What it shows is that
they are essentially connected — within the structure of a unified,
purposeful activity.25° In my model, the straightening of the fibres
is ingeniously effected by a circuitous course of the machine. (And
this will be true for any carding process that justifies the description
as ‘straight and crooked’.) In this perspective, the unity of the
opposites is their necessary co-presence as cause and effect within a
single intelligent activity. And this process is motivated by the con-
trast between the initially twisted and finally straight condition of
the fibres.
So interpreted, the figure of the carding instrument points to a dif-
ferent aspect of the doctrine of opposites, illustrated by the drawn
bow in LXXVIII (D. 51): the functional unity of opposing tendencies
within a purposeful human activity. But the occurrence here of the
word ‘path’ (hodos), echoed in CIII (D. 60) for the ‘way up and
down’, may also point to a larger unity of opposites within the pro-
cess of cosmic change.
In this generalized version of the doctrine illustrated by the archer’s
bow and the process of carding, the positive-negative contrast seems
to be lost from view. In fact, it will be represented in LXXVIII by
the pairing of the bow and the lyre, as here by the contrast between
twisted and straightened wool. Furthermore the positive-negative
opposition is directly preserved by the connotations of the terms
‘straight’ (euthus, Ionic ithus) and ‘crooked’ (skolios). We have seen
these as opposed characterizations of diké, the judgment rendered by
a prince or law court. But dzké suggests punishment, and that idea
may be in the background here if Heraclitus was familiar with the
carding wheel as an instrument of torture used by his Lydian neigh-
Commentary: LXXV (D. 8) 193
bors, the former rulers of Ephesus. At the most allusive but also
most meaningful level, this brief text can be understood as a comment
on the order of nature and the course of human life. Irrational, cruel,
and needlessly destructive as it often appears, this ‘twisted’ course of
events is pilotted according to a wise pattern that is — like the course
of the elements and the seasonal variations in the sun’s path — ulti-
mately to be seen as ‘straight’ and just.
LXXV
LXXV (D.8) Aristotle: [Heraclitus says ‘the counter-thrust brings together’,
and from tones at variance comes the finest attunement (harmonia), and ‘all
things come to pass through conflict’.]
There is now general agreement that (as Bywater had already sup-
posed) this text is a reminiscence rather than a direct quotation. But
Aristotle’s memory was a remarkable one, and the last clause (‘all
things come to pass according to strife’) is a literal, though partial,
citation of LXXXII (D. 80). Similarly the first clause, though not
elsewhere attested, seems to be a faithful reflection of something in
Heraclitus’ text, as the presence of the Ionic word antixoun indicates.
(So rightly Kirk, p. 220.) It is only the second clause, ‘from notes at
variance (i.e. differing and quarreling, diapherontón) comes the finest
harmonia’, whose accuracy is subject to doubt. Recent authors,
beginning with Gigon, have assumed that this is a paraphrase of
LXXVIII (D. 51); and Marcovich (p. 124) has plausibly suggested that
Aristotle was influenced here by the memory of a Platonic phrase,
offered (at Symposium 187 A) as an exegesis of LXXVIII: ‘from high
and low notes that were previously at variance . . . when they later
come to an agreement, a harmonia is produced’.
That leaves us with the initial antithesis, antixoun sympheron, asa
possible quotation not otherwise preserved. My rendering suggests
the literal image: pressure in the opposite direction has the paradoxical
effect of bringing things together, as in the case of the bow, where
the movement of the hands apart brings the two ends of the bow
closer to one another. This thought recurs in the pairing of *conver-
gent, divergent! (sympheromenon diapheromenon) in CXXIV (D. 10).
But the two terms also have a figurative sense: 'the hindrance is a
benefit’, ‘opposition is profitable’. This gives an explicit statement of
the thought implicit in LXVII-LXXIV: in the perspective of wisdom,
the negative term will always have a positive value.
194 Commentary: LXXVI—LXXVII (D. 11, 125)
LXXVI-LXXVII
LXXVI(D.11) АП beasts are driven <to pasture by blows.
LXXVII (D. 125) Theophrastus: [As Heraclitus says, even the potion separates
unless it is stirred.]
These two texts emphasize the beneficial role of motion and compul-
sion, in overcoming the natural tendency of a mixed drink to separate
and of cattle or flocks to stand still or to wander off in the wrong
direction. The unity and stability of the mixture depends on its being
disturbed and agitated; the safety of the herds is preserved and their
appetites satisfied, as it were against their will. Compare LII (D. 84A):
‘it rests by changing’.
Beyond this first level of meaning we may recognize 'signals'
(sémata) of a deeper view. The violence illustrated in LXXVI and
LXXVII probably alludes to the guidance by which the general order
of things is maintained. The commentators have noted that the word
plégé for the herdsman's blow invokes an old poetic theme ‘the stroke
of Zeus’, which applies literally to the thunderbolt and figuratively
to the power and decisive action of Zeus in human affairs.?5! The
application to human life is indicated by the term herpeta ‘creeping
things' for animals or beasts, in another Homeric echo of the phrase
for human beings, most miserable ‘of all the things that breathe and
creep upon the earth’.252 In the image it is the cattle on their way to
pasture, in the figurative allusion it is ourselves that receive the herds-
man's stroke.
There is probably another hyponoza, implied in the stirring move-
ment by which the unity of the potion is preserved in LXXVII. This
may serve as an image for the celestial rotation of sun and stars by
which cosmic order is maintained, and which is itself the residue of a
primordial vortex or whirlpool (dine) from which this order was
generated. The rotary motion of the heavens, which plays a central
part in the cosmology of Anaxagoras, was later satirized by Aris-
tophanes in his description of Whirl (Dinos) as driving out Zeus and
stealing his throne (Clouds 380f.; cf. 828). It must have figured
conspicuously in the system of turning wheels (kyklot) that composed
the original cosmos of Anaximander; and it will be such a motion that
Xenophanes has in mind when he speaks of his greatest god as
*effortlessly shaking all things by the intention of his mind' (fr. 25).
So the motion of the drink whose name means ‘stirring’ or ‘churning’
(kykeon, from the verb kykad), and whose consistency depends upon
Commentary: LXXVIII (D. 51) 195
the continuation of this motion, is an apt figure for the cosmic
rotation.253
LXXVIII
LXXVIII (D. 51) They do not comprehend how a thing agrees at variance with
itself: <и is> an attunement (or ‘fitting together’, harmonié) turning back Xon
itself>, like that of the bow and the lyre.
The philosophical interpretation of LXXVIII has been obstructed by
needless controversy over three textual and philological problems,
which must be briefly dealt with before the content can be discussed.
(1) The manuscripts of Hippolytus have the reading homologeein,
a trivial miswriting of homologeez: ‘it (that is, the universal arrange-
ment or any particular instance of it, speaking as a logos) agrees with
itself*.25* Zeller, insensitive to the imagery and flexibility of
Heraclitus’ language, proposed that we ‘correct’ this admirable text
on the basis of no paleographical evidence whatsoever, in order to
conform with a free paraphrase in Plato's Symposium 187A, in the
speech of Eryximachus quoted above, where instead of homologeein
Plato writes sympheresthai, obviously on the basis of the
sympheromenon-diapheromenon contrast in CXXIV (D. 10: ‘con-
vergent divergent"). It is one of the strangest phenomena in Herac-
litean scholarship that this indefensible alteration of an unexceptional
text transmitted by our most reliable ancient source — an alteration
based upon nothing more than an inexact quotation in an after-dinner
speech — has been accepted by a whole generation of recent editors
from Gigon and Walzer to Marcovich. But in thus ‘emending’ the
text they are certainly ill-advised.255 With Diels-Kranz and Bollack-
Wismann, we may keep the text of Hippolytus with complete con-
fidence.
(2) For palintropos ‘back-turning’ as epithet of harmonié in
Hippolytus, Plutarch (who cites this fragment three times) once sub-
stitutes the Homeric epithet for the bow: palintonos ‘back-stretched’
or ‘back-bending’. This misquotation is a natural one, since the
expression palintona toxa ‘back-bending bow’ is familiar to everyone
brought up on Homer. And that it is a misquotation is guaranteed by
the fact that Plutarch confirms Hippolytus’ reading in two out of
three саѕеѕ.256 Hippolytus is our best source; and his reading is also
the lectio difficilior, as Wilamowitz pointed out. It is predominant in
Plutarch, our only other reliable authority for this fragment. And this
196 Commentary: LXXVIII (D. 51)
phrase palintropos harmonié turns out to have a definite philosophic
importance. So here again we can accept Hippolytus' text without
the shadow of a scholarly doubt.
(3) The last preliminary problem concerns not the text but the
meaning of harmonié, a term which occurs at least twice in Heraclitus
(here and in D. 54; in LXXV, D. 8, it may not represent an indepen-
dent citation). The original sense and development of the term are
fairly clear. Harmonié is derived from a root (represented in the verbs
arariskó and harmozó) meaning ‘to join’ or ‘to fit together’; it is used
by Homer, Herodotus, and some later authors to mean a joint or
seam or a ‘fitting together’, as in works of carpentry or shipbuilding
(Od. V. 248, 261; Hdt. II.96.2). But from the beginning the word is
also used figuratively, for ‘agreements’ or ‘compacts’ between hostile
men (Л. XXII.255), and hence for the personified power of *Recon-
ciliation’, the child of Ares and Aphrodite in Hesiod (Theogony 937).
So Empedocles could employ Harmonié as another name for Philotés
or Aphrodite, his counterpart to Strife or Conflict, the principle of
proportion and agreement which creates a harmonious unity out of
potentially hostile powers.?57 Another figurative use is for the tuning
of a musical instrument, the ‘fitting together’ of different strings to
produce the desired scale or key. This musical application is well
attested in Pindar, where the term occurs three times in the semi-
technical sense of ‘scale’, ‘mode’, or ‘musical composition’.258 Both
musical and wider metaphorical values of the word are combined in
the Pythagorean view that opposing powers of the cosmos are held
together by a principle of harmonia, an ‘adjustment’ or ‘reconciliation’
that takes the form of a musical ‘octave’ (Philolaus fr. 6). The
Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres, presupposed in
Plato’s Myth of Er and reported by Aristotle (De Caelo II.9), seems
to be implicit in Philolaus’ notion of harmon:a and might go back to
the founder of the school.259
Thus we have a triple range of meaning for harmonié: physical fit-
ting together of parts, as in carpentry; military or social agreement
between potential opponents as in a truce or a civic order; and
musical attunement of strings and tones. The half-musical, half-
political sense of ‘concord’ or ‘harmony’ which predominates in the
later history of the term had not been established as a fixed usage for
harmonié in the time of Heraclitus.?9? But that usage is nothing more
than a simplified fusion of two of the three archaic senses of the term
just surveyed.
On the view of Heraclitus' verbal technique which I have proposed,
Commentary: LXXVIII (D. 51) 197
we expect to find harmonie used in all available senses: as a physical
fitting together of parts, as a principle of reconciliation between
opponents, and as a pattern of musical attunement. These three
senses are combined in the new, specifically Heraclitean notion of the
structure or fitting together of the cosmic order as a unity produced
from conflict.261
Now for a literal exegesis. I consider the phrases one by one, and
then survey the thought of the fragment as a whole.
The opening words ou xyniasin ‘They do not comprehend’ take us
back to the theme of the proem: ‘men ever fail to comprehend this
logos’ (1.1); uncomprehending (axynetoz), even when they have
heard they are like the deaf’ (II, D. 34). The syllable xyn- echoes ог
anticipates the term xynos, ‘what is shared’ or ‘common’: the logos
is shared (xynos), but men treat their thinking (phronésis) as though
it were private (III, D. 2). The uncomprehending are precisely those
who do not grasp what is common (xynon); speaking with under-
standing (хуп noo?) means holding fast to what is shared (10 xyno:)
by all things (XXX, D. 114). LXXVIII tells us just what this common
structure is: the logos ‘according to which all things come to pass’ is
here articulated as the agreement or ‘fitting together’ of a system of
tension and opposition.
‘They do not comprehend how a thing at variance with itself
(diapheromenon hedutot) speaks in agreement (homologee:).' It is
difference or conflict that is obvious; what men do not see is the
unifying structure. (Compare XIX, D. 57 on the unity of day and
night.) The term for opposition, diapheromenon, has an etymological
sense, of ‘moving apart’, ‘diverging’, hence ‘differing’; but the syntax
with the dative singles out the notion of hostility as predominant.
The principle of agreement-in-conflict is expressed in neuter form, as
in CXXIV (D. 10): sympheromenon diapheromenon ‘it moves
together and it moves apart’ (‘convergent divergent’) and synaidon
diaidon ‘it sings together and it sings apart’ (‘consonant dissonant’).
In both cases we have a strangely personified neuter, which there
sings and here quarrels and ‘speaks in agreement’ with itself. (Com-
pare the neuter in LII, D. 84A: ‘it rests by changing’.) The force of
the neuter is one of generalization: this pattern applies to the uni-
verse as a whole and to every organized portion thereof.
The term for agreement, homologeein, must echo or anticipate
XXXVI (D. 50, which Hippolytus has just quoted): wisdom consists
in listening to the logos and saying in agreement (homologein) that
all things are one. This term thus connects LXXVIII both with the
198 | Commentary: LXXVIII (D. 51)
initial theme of logos and the culminating assertion of unity, as well
as with that notion of wisdom that is grounded in the recognition of
unity. (Cf. LIV, D. 41.)
This implicit personification of the cosmic pattern, as a logos that
while quarrelling agrees with itself, lapses after the word homologeei.
In its place we have an image involving two comparisons: ‘a harmonie,
turning back on itself, like that of the bow and the lyre’. In this
image one aspect is clear and two are obscure. What is clear is the
notion of harmonié for the lyre, since the term immediately denotes
the stringing or tuning of the instrument, and a 'tune' which the lyre
may play. The double enigma lies in (1) ‘harmonié of the bow’,
where harmonié cannot have the same sense, and (2) the epithet
palintropos ‘back-turning’, which has no obvious point, but is
emphatically placed at the very center of the fragment.
Consider first the ‘harmonzé of the bow’. Taken by itself, the
phrase is unproblematic: harmonié means the physical fitting together
or construction of the bow. The riddle lies in the conjunction of the
two comparisons: how is a single pattern illustrated both by the har-
monié of the bow and by that of the lyre?
We can avoid the paradox by taking harmonié in the same sense
twice: structure of the bow, structure of the lyre. But this is not very
plausible for the lyre, given the musical connotations of harmonie.
(Both Plato and Aristotle understood the musical sense here, as will
be seen.) In fact, this is one of those ‘solutions’ to Heraclitus’ riddles
that simplify the text by impoverishing its range of meaning — in this
case, by eliminating the semantic tension between two senses of har-
monié: the structure (and function) of the bow, the tuning (and play-
ing) of the lyre. The music of Apollo's favorite instrument and the
death-dealing power of his customary weapon must be taken together
as an expression of the ‘joining’ that characterizes the universal pat-
tern of things.
But the two images can also be understood separately. The best
commentary on the ‘fitting’ of the bow — the fitting of the string to
the bow-arms and the fitting of an arrow to the string — is still that
of Lewis Campbell (who took his inspiration from Plato’s remark at
Republic 439B): ‘As the arrow leaves the string, the hands are pull-
ing opposite ways to each other, and to the different parts of the
bow.’262 A single rational intention (in the most literal sense of
intendere: aiming at a target) is realized by a system in which physical
tensions in opposite directions serve both as instance and as symbol
for the general principle of opposition. The opposing forces ‘speak
Commentary: LXXVIII (D. 51) 199
as one' in the flight of the arrow. In the lyre, however, while the
thought of the tense strings, perhaps even of the curving arms, con-
tinues the idea of harmonié of the bow, the predominant notion is
the distinctly musical thought rendered in CXXIV (D. 10): synaidon
diaidon ‘consonant dissonant’, or, as Aristotle puts it, ‘from tones at
variance comes the finest harmonié’.2®3 Whether ‘the harmonie of
the lyre’ means a scale, a mode, or a melody, it is in any case a unity
produced from diversity which, but for the musician's skill in tuning
(and plucking) the strings, would easily fall apart into dissonance or
cacophony. And the diversity is essential. If the strings stood in
mechanical agreement, or if the musician plucked only one string
with constant tension, no music could result.
This leaves us with the enigmatic epithet palintropos, in its domi-
nating position at the center. Some editors have sought to avoid
(rather than resolve) this riddle by preferring the textual variant
palintonos ‘back-stretched’, a regular, almost ornamental epithet of
the bow. Its occurrence here would not be surprising, just as it is no
surprise to find this as a variant in some ancient citations. But in fact
Heraclitus seems deliberately to have chosen palintropos as an un-
expected substitute for the familiar epithet, and he has left us to
wonder мћу.264 What is the point to this less banal and less perspicu-
ous epithet? For although palintropos ‘back-turning’ has roughly the
same sense as palintonos ‘back-stretched’, it does not apply so neatly
here, precisely because (since it omits the root of -tonos, teinein) it
does not refer directly to the stretching or tuning of strings.
The solution to this puzzle is obvious, once we grasp the allusive
nature of Heraclitus’ style and his systematic use of resonance. By
Homeric reminiscence, palintropos immediately suggests palintonos
(as the variant citations show). Hence the former term is richer, since
by association it includes the latter as well. But it adds something
more in the notion of -tropos. This is the clue to the significance of
the whole fragment as a description of cosmic structure and unity.
For the epithet ‘back-turning’ provides a direct allusion to the *turn-
ings’ or ‘reversals’ (tropa?) of fire in XXXVIII (D. 31A), and hence to
their more familiar parallel, the seasonal turning back of the sun in
summer and winter. (See above on XLIV, D. 94.) By this perplexing
use here of a compound in -tropos ‘turning’, Heraclitus recalls that
other riddle about the ‘turnings’ of fire. And he recalls its solution as
well, in the annual pattern of reversals of the sun when it reaches its
termata or limits (XLV, D. 120), north in summer, south in winter,
the slow seasonal pendulum swing of the sun back and forth, the
200 Commentary: LXXVIII (D. 51)
palintropos harmonié by which the diversity and uniformity of the
life cycle of nature is guaranteed.
With the phrase palintropos harmonié Heraclitus thus forges the
link between his doctrine of opposites and his cosmology. The notion
of a harmonié or fitting together serves to connect the anthropo-
centric doctrine of opposites outlined in LXVII-LXXIII with the
wider notion of the cosmic logos (echoed here in homo-logee:) and
with the notion of the kosmos itself, the world ordering represented
by the measures of fire, as exemplified in the alternation of day and
night and in the annual cycle of the sun. It is appropriate that this
link between various kinds of opposition be articulated by the very
notion of ‘joining’ or ‘fitting together’ (harmonie). This concept is
more vividly illustrated by the drawn bow, more richly and subtly by
the tuning and playing of the lyre, and most completely by the con-
junction of the two: the twin attributes of ‘the lord whose oracle is
in Delphi’, whose ‘sign’ in this case is a pair of instruments related to
one another as war to peace. (For the appearance of war and peace
between the ‘cosmic’ terms day and night, winter and summer and
the ‘human’ opposites satiety and hunger, see CXXIII, D. 67.)
The mediating concept which makes possible the generalized doc-
trine of opposites, and which therefore provides the key to under-
standing the unity of Heraclitus’ system, is precisely this notion of
harmonié as an intelligent structure or purposeful activity, a unified
whole whose essential parts (or stages or tendencies) are related to
one another by polar contrast.?95 Although this notion is most clearly
exhibited in products of human art or in activities such as archery
and music, carding wool and stirring the kykeon drink, it also applies
to the understanding of (that is, the comprehension of unified struc-
ture within) such natural phenomena as night and day, summer and
winter, and the cycle of elementary transformations. The concept of
harmonié as a unity composed of conflicting parts is thus the model
for an understanding of the world ordering as a unified whole. And it
is the comprehension of this pattern in all its applications that con-
stitutes wisdom. For it is this structure that is common (xynon) to all
things. And this pattern, or its recognition, is what Heraclitus desig-
nates as gnó mé, the plan or intention by which all things are steered
through all (LIV, D. 41).
Commentary: LXXIX (D. 48) 201
LXXIX
LXXIX (D. 48) The name of the bow is life; its work is death.
This is one of three fragments in which Heraclitus’ interest in words
and word play manifests itself in the mention of a particular name.266
The concern with the truth and falsity of names, with ‘etymology’
understood as a search for the deeper significance hidden in words
and naming, is characteristic of archaic thought generally, not only in
Greece. But it is particularly striking in the literature and philosophy
of the early fifth century. We find a comparable interest in Parmenides,
though with a different philosophic bias. In the Eleatic conception of
language, names typically express a false or mistaken view of reality.267
Heraclitus is closer to the standard archaic view reflected in Aeschylus,
that names are ‘truly’ given (etétymos, aléthos) and hence that there
are truths expressed in them for whoever knows how to read the
meaning.?$8 This view gives rise to the allegorical interpretation of
divine names that is developed in the Cratylus and even more sys-
tematically by the Stoics. It is probably no accident that three out of
four of the references to naming in Heraclitus concern the designation
of divine powers (Zeus, Dike, and ‘the god’ of CXXIII, D. 67). But
the truths hidden in divine names or familiar words are for Heraclitus
only a special case of the epistemic situation: the truth is continually
speaking to men, like a /ogos or discourse, but they cannot grasp the
hyponota, the underlying thought or meaning.
LXXIX is the only instance where Heraclitus refers to a name that
is not that of a deity. But the bow is important in its own right, as
weapon and symbol of Apollo, in addition to the special use that
Heraclitus makes of it in LXXVIII. Now at the surface level our text
presents a paradoxical opposition between the old name for the bow
(0:05), which in the unaccented written form was indistinguishable
from the ordinary word for life (bios), and the actual use of the instru-
ment in hunting and warfare. This opposition is expressed by a verbal
antithesis (onoma versus ergon) that prefigures the sophistic contrast
between ‘in word’ (logos) and ‘in deed’ (ergon). A superficial judg-
ment would thus conclude that the bow had been ill-named. But that
judgment implies the error of taking the opposition of life and death
as irreducible, by failing to see ‘how it agrees in variance with itself’.
The life-signifying name for the instrument of death points to some
reconciliation between the opponents, some fitting together as in the
unity of Day and Night (XIX, D. 57).
202 Commentary: LXXX (D. 54)
The connections of the bow with death and destruction are
obvious enough. But how can it also stand for life, or for some union
of the two? One might think of the use of the bow in hunting, where
the death of animals sustains the life of the killers. But probably more
is meant here, some deeper connection between life and death such
as is indicated in XCII (D. 62) and XCIII (D. 88). Taken alone,
LXXIX can only stand as a griphos, a riddle in which the name of the
bow hints at some larger meaning that we cannot yet make out.
LXXX
LXXX (D. 54) The hidden attunement (harmonie) is better than the obvious
one.
This is one of the shortest and most beautifully designed of the frag-
ments. Out of four Greek words (harmonié aphanés phanerés kreit-
tôn) two are presented as epithets of harmonzé, while the third is con-
strued as epithet of the same noun elliptically understood (in the
genitive). Two of these three adjectives are formally related as positive
and privative: phaneros, aphanés ‘apparent, unapparent’ or ‘obvious,
hidden'. By placing these terms in central position, Heraclitus has
exhibited the unifying role of opposition within the verbal structure
of this brief sentence. And by affirming that the negative term is
superior to the positive, he has expressed in a formal way the dialecti-
cal re-evaluation of the negative principle that characterizes so much
of what he has to say about the opposites.
Any exegesis of LXXX must be speculative, since the sentence
itself does not specify what is meant by the hidden harmonié. But a
literal reading poses no real problems, as long as we avoid the trap of
supposing that Heraclitus intends his words to be taken in only one
sense. The range of meaning for harmonié is too wide for any one
rendering to be adequate. As partial translations we might offer
‘Sweeter than heard harmonies are those unheard’ (after Keats), or
‘Hidden structure is more powerful than visible structure’ (after
Bronowski). If we give up the attempt to render harmonie, the rest
can be translated literally as: ‘Harmonié which does not appear clearly
is superior to that which is clear and apparent.’ The adjective Rreittón
is again polysemous, meaning 'stronger, more powerful', but also
‘better, more desirable’. The latter will presumably be the natural
sense on first reading; the physical or political notion (‘stronger’,
‘dominant’) brings with it a deeper interpretation. For once we take
Commentary: LXXX (D. 54) 203
kreittón in this sense, it suggests a verbal allusion to the ‘divine one’
mentioned in XXX (D. 114), which ‘prevails (krate:) as it will and
suffices for all’. The universal harmonie or fitting together and the
divine unity that structures the world are only different modes of
designating the same principle.
The phrase ‘hidden structure’, harmonié aphanés, might thus be
taken as a general title for Heraclitus’ philosophical thought.2®9 And
it is no accident that the same title may describe his mode of
expression, where the immediate ‘surface’ meaning is often less
significant than the latent intention carried by allusion, enigma, and
resonance.
What is the contrasting notion of phaneré harmonie, the ‘visible
structure’ or ‘plain attunement’? In the musical sense, the manifest
harmonié must be the tune, the fitting together of notes produced by
the musician and apprehended by the audience. On this reading LXXX
states that the less conspicuous attunement (between human or cos-
mic opposites) is finer and more powerful than the harmonies of the
lyre. But if harmonie is taken physically, as the construction of a bow
or any work of plastic art, then the thought becomes: no joiner builds
as well as the pilot of the universe. No work of art achieves a unity
and fitting together as strong as the natural kosmos which most men
fail to see.
These musical and structural senses of harmonié are combined in
the Pythagorean notion of the harmonié of the heavens, the cosmic
music ordered by the basic ratios of 2:1, 3:2, 4:3. Now the music of
the heavens, according to the Pythagoreans, is something we cannot
hear. In this sense it is aphanés, hidden. In view of Heraclitus’ con-
spicuous antipathy for Pythagoras, it is not likely that the harmonie
he has in mind in LXXX is just the one defined in the Pythagorean
doctrine — even if we could be sure that the doctrine in question was
known at this time.?7? But just as Heraclitus’ doctrine of the psyche
and its destiny after death can only be understood as a modification
and development of Pythagorean ideas, so perhaps his conception of
an all-pervasive harmonié is best seen as a response to Pythagoras’
own conception of the world in terms of the musical numbers. The
ratios 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3 will represent the underlying, non-apparent
fitting together of strings and instrument that permits the musician
to produce tones that are perceived as consonant or concordant.
Thus the connection between measures, cosmic order, and the pat-
tern of opposites and their agreement, could have been suggested to
204 Commentary: LXXXI (D. A22)
Heraclitus by a Pythagorean concept of musical harmonia in numerical
terms, presented as a key to the structure of the heavens. Now the
notion of cosmic measures goes back to Miletus.27! But Heraclitus’
own conception of this order in terms of logos and harmonié is more
directly intelligible as a generalization of the Pythagorean notion of
the musical ratios, where these are conceived as a principle of 'attune-
ment’ by which opposing principles are reconciled and set in order, as
Philolaus says (DK 44.B 6). Philolaus comes later, of course, and it is
possible that his own conception of a cosmic harmonia joining the
opposites by musical proportion is itself derived from Heraclitus. It is
my guess that the line of influence goes in the opposite direction, and
that Philolaus here preserves an old Pythagorean view utilized by
Heraclitus.
LXXXI
LXXXIA (D. A22) Aristotle: [Heraclitus reproaches the poet for the verse
‘Would that Conflict might vanish from among gods and men!’ (Iliad XVIII.107).
For there would be no attunement (harmonia) without high and low notes nor
any animals without male and female, both of which are opposites.]
LXXXIB Scholia A to Шаа ХУШ.107: [Heraclitus, who believes that the
nature of things was constructed according to conflict (eris), finds fault with
Homer «for this verse>, on the grounds that he is praying for the destruction of
the cosmos.]
There is only one point here that clearly goes beyond a summary of
doctrines better preserved in other quotations, namely, that Heraclitus
introduced his own apotheosis of strife and warfare by a rejection of
the prayer uttered by Achilles in his great speech of regret over the
quarrel with Agamemnon. This attack on Homer, which must be con-
nected with Heraclitus’ own view of war in LXXXII—LXXXIII, is the
counterpart to his criticism of Hesiod for failing to recognize the
unity of night and day. Homer and Hesiod, the pre-eminent wise men
and teachers of the Greeks, represent the general folly of mankind in
failing to perceive the ‘unapparent harmonie! in which the tension
between opposing powers is as indispensable as their reconciliation
within a larger unity. The thought here is probably connected with
the riddle of XXII (D. 56) where Homer like other men is ‘deceived
in the recognition of what is apparent'. For to recognize the apparent
is precisely to see it within the framework of the hidden fitting
together.
Commentary: LXXXII (D. 80) 205
LXXXII
LXXXII (D. 80) One must realize that war is shared and Conflict is Justice,
and that all things come to pass (and are ordained?) in accordance with conflict.
In this and the next fragment (LXXXIII, D. 53) Heraclitus formulates
his doctrine of opposition as an explicit theme, under the title of War
(polemos) and Conflict (eris). LXXXII may be read as a further state-
ment of the thought of LXXVIII, the insight that Homer and most
men cannot grasp: how anything at variance with itself is also in
agreement. Four clauses represent four different answers to the ques-
tion ‘What is it that most men do not comprehend?’
(1) ‘One must realize that War is common (xynos, shared).' Herac-
litus pursues his polemic against Homer (cf. LXXXI) by adapting the
poet's own words; and since the quotation is also familiar from Archi-
lochus there may be a side-thrust in this direction as well.?72 Homer
had said: ‘Enyalios (i.e. Ares) is common (xynos), and the killer gets
killed’ (П. XVIII.309). The passage occurs just 200 lines after Achilles’
curse on strife, which was prompted by the death of Patroclus. This
time it is Hector, Patroclus’ killer, who is speaking and who is, in
effect, predicting his own death. Archilochus repeats the sentiment
with emphasis: ‘truly, Ares is common (xynos) to men’ (fr. 38 Diehl).
The sense of ‘truly’ (etétymon) may be echoed here by Heraclitus’
use of the participle eonta: ‘war is really common’. But in place of
the familiar thought that the fortunes of war are shared by both sides
and that the victor today may be vanquished tomorrow, Heraclitus
takes xynos ‘common’ in his own sense of ‘universal’, ‘all-pervading’,
‘unifying’ (above, pp. 101f.), and thus gives the words of the poets a
deeper meaning they themselves did not comprehend. The symmetrical
confrontation of the two sides in battle now becomes a figura for the
shifting but reciprocal balance between opposites in human life and
in the natural world, for the structure designated harmonié in
LXXVIII (D. 51). The imagery of the bow and the lyre is thus sup-
plemented by that of two champions or two armies facing one another.
The description of this combat as xynos hints at the principle which
unites and reconciles the warriors, not by an open truce or agreement
but by a more obscure harmonié in ‘the divine one’, the structure that
is ‘common to all things’ and binds them together, as the law of the
city is a common bond for all the citizens (XXX, D. 114).
(2) ‘Conflict is Justice’ or justice is strife’. The word order does
not permit us to distinguish subject and predicate; it makes no differ-
ence, since Heraclitus is in effect identifying the two terms. This
206 Commentary: LXXXII (D. 80)
identification is at first sight utterly perverse. For in the tradition of
moral thinking represented by Hesiod and Solon, the notions of con-
flict and violence are systematically opposed to those of law and jus-
tice.273 In an innovation that might be seen as an earlier response to
Homer's curse on eris, Hesiod had distinguished ‘good conflict’ or
creative competition from evil strife that leads to warfare, lawlessness,
and crime.274
It is a natural consequence of Heraclitus! monism that he should
reject Hesiod's distinction between good and bad strife. But the pro-
vocative character of his assertion is best appreciated if we think of
him as accepting the distinction for the sake of the argument, and
then equating evil Eris with the principle of justice.
The point of this paradoxical equivalence can be understood only
if we bear in mind that warfare has become a figure for opposition in
general: only at the cosmic level can Conflict and Justice be reconciled
and seen as one. In human terms, the relationship between strife and
‘straight judgments’ is as Solon and Hesiod have depicted it: it is
quarrelling that makes Justice necessary, and it is the function of wise
judgment to eliminate violence from the community. But just as war
has been generalized for the opposition that structures all things, so
Heraclitus (following Anaximander) has taken Justice in the widest
possible sense, as the pattern of order and reciprocity in the cycle of
the seasons, the principle of regularity that oversees ‘the measures of
the sun’. (See on XLIV, D. 94.) In this larger order, the principle of
just requital and compensation (dikë and antamoibe) coincides with
the principle of tension and opposition, for these are alternative
descriptions of a single, all-embracing structure.
In the fragment of Anaximander adzkia, ‘injustice’, denotes the
victory of one opposing power over another. Hence Heraclitus' identi-
fication of conflict with Justice can be seen as a deliberate correction.
Thus Vlastos wrote:
Two of the fundamental ideas in Anaximander — that there is
strife among the elements, and that a just order is nevertheless
preserved — are reasserted in a form which universalizes both of
them and thereby resolves the opposition between them: what is
a ‘nevertheless’ in Anaximander, becomes a ‘therefore’ in Heraclitus.
The result is that no part of nature can ‘over-step its measures’...
and not . . . that long-term excess is punished . . . which is. . . what
Anaximander had taught . . . There can be no excess at all, long-
term or short-term either. (‘On Heraclitus’, in Furley and Allen, p.
419)
Commentary: LX XXIII (D. 53) 207
Since dikë is regularly thought of as a balance of crime and punish-
ment, Heraclitus! extension of this notion to a cosmic system of
opposition and ‘reversals’ (tropa?) might have been made even without
Anaximander's phrase about injustice and retribution. But the general
dependence of Heraclitus’ thought on Milesian cosmology is so clear,
and the conception of the elementary opposites so similar, that it is
natural to suspect some allusion to Anaximander's words in the juxta-
position here of Conflict and Justice. Still, the polemical thrust of
this identification is probably directed less against the recondite text
of Anaximander than against the mainstream of Greek thought
represented by Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, and Solon.
Polemical intent aside, Vlastos is clearly right to insist that Herac-
litus' conception of cosmic justice goes beyond that of Anaximander,
since he construes dikë not merely as compensation for crime or
excess but as a total pattern that includes both punishment and crime
itself, as necessary ingredients of the world order. We have here the
cosmic analogue to LXIX (D. 23): ‘If it were not for these things,
they would not have known the name of Dike.’
(3) ‘All things come to pass (ginomena) in accordance with con-
flict.’ The stylistic echo of the proem (‘all things come to pass in
accordance with this logos’) serves to define the central role of op-
position. When logos is understood not merely as the discourse of
Heraclitus but as the structure he describes, this structure is seen as
one of antithesis, tension, conflict.
The word ginomena, ‘come to pass’, can also mean ‘come into
being’, ‘be born’. This vivid sense of birth, perhaps latent here, be-
comes explicit in LXXXIII, where war is described in mythic terms
as ‘father of all’.
(4) ‘And (all things) are ordained (?) in accordance with conflict.’
Unfortunately the last word of LXXXII (chreómena in the manu-
script) is almost certainly corrupt. I have kept this reading with only
the faintest hope that this might be possible Greek for ‘are ordained
(as by an oracle)’, ‘are established as right and necessary’, with the
sense of the participle oriented by the opening word of the fragment
(chre), as Bollack-Wismann suggest. But the text is too uncertain to
support any interpretation that will not stand on its own feet.?75
LXXXIII
LXXXIII (D. 53) War is father of all and king of all; and some he has shown as
gods, others men; some he has made slaves, others free.
208 Commentary: LXXXIII (D. 53)
The doctrine of opposition is here restated in even more dramatic and
more puzzling form. How can war, the typical cause of death and
destruction, be universal father responsible for birth and life? And if
it is clear how warfare can account for the distinction between free
men and slaves (since it was common practice to enslave the popu-
lation of a conquered city), in what sense does it fix a distinction be-
tween men and gods?
The resolution of both puzzles turns on the ambiguity between war
in the literal sense and Heraclitus’ use of the term for a universal prin-
ciple of opposition. It is the second notion that is personified here in
the phrase ‘father of all and king of all’, echoing the Homeric formula
for Zeus: ‘father of men and gods’, The term panton ‘of all’ is
ambiguous (as elsewhere) between personal and neuter form, so that
War is presented as father not only of gods and men like Zeus, but of
‘all things that come to pass’ (ginomena panta in LX XXII); and the
phrase ‘king of all (persons, or things)’ is not formulaic, hence even
more emphatic here.?76 Thus War figures not merely as a substitute
for Zeus but as a kind of super-Zeus, like *the divine one' of XXX (D.
114). An assimilation to Zeus is also suggested by the verb edeixe ‘he
has shown some as gods, some as men', which recalls the typical sig-
nal of Zeus’ governance, when he gives an omen on high ‘showing a
sign’ of his favor or ill-will.27? This personification of the chief cos-
mic principle, in terms of imagery normally associated with the king
of the gods, prepares and explains the announcement that ‘the wise
one alone is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus’
(CXVIII, D. 32).
As long as War is understood in this general sense there is no diffi-
culty in seeing how it is responsible for mortality and divinity, slavery
and freedom, since it is (by definition) the decisive plan or causal
factor in everything that comes to pass. It remains to be seen whether
another coherent interpretation can be given by taking polemos liter-
ally throughout, as ordinary combat. There is no problem with the
freedom-slavery distinction on this reading. But what sense can we
make of war ‘showing’ or ‘designating’ gods as well as men? Gigon
thought that the reference must be to death in battle: those who sur-
vive remain men; those who fall are raised to the condition of deity.?78
Insofar as this question concerns the fate of human beings after death,
it will be dealt with below (on XCII, D. 62; XCVI, D. 25; C, D. 24;
and especially CIX, D. 118).
By contrast with LXXXII, the apotheosis of War in LXXXIII is dis-
tinguished by its vivid personification and sharper focussing on the
Commentary: LXXXIII (D. 53) 209
destiny of mankind. The human condition is defined by a double set
of oppositions: the internal antithesis between free and servile status
(the most radical contrast conceivable in ancient society); and the
external contrast between men and gods, as in the traditional con-
ception of human beings as mortal earthlings. The parallel may suggest
that just as freedom and slavery are alternative, sometimes successive,
conditions for the same beings, so humanity and divinity are alterna-
tive, even alternating states which — like day and night, war and peace,
life and death — define by their opposition and succession the full
dimensions of human existence. (Recall *war is common": the killer
gets killed, and he who conquers one day may be vanquished the
next.) It is just such an equivalence-in-succession that we find in
XCII (D. 62): mortals are immortals, immortals mortals.
Before turning to texts dealing with the afterlife, we may sum up
the doctrine articulated in LXVII-LXXXIII. These fragments list
pairs of opposition of different kinds which are all in some sense
anthropocentric, in that the opposing terms correspond to two con-
trasting human experiences (LXVII and LXXIII), two states or con-
cepts governing human life (justice and injustice in LXVIII-LXIX,
slave and free in LXXXIII), the contrast between a human response
and that of another species (LXX—LXXII), some tension characteriz-
ing a human activity (LXXIV—LXXIX), or an opposition between
the human and the divine (as in LXVIII, LXXXIII; cf. the human lack
of insight in LV—LVIII). Other fragments present a different range of
oppositions more properly described as cosmic, in that the relevant
contrast does not depend in any essential way upon the existence of
human beings: night and day in XIX and CXXIII, cold-warm and
moist-dry in XLIX, fire-sea, sea-earth and sea-préstér in XXXVIII—
XXXIX, winter-summer in CXXIII. The ‘cosmic’ fragments are full
of cosmic antitheses; and nearly all of these may be thought of as
manifestations of the kindling and quenching of universal fire
(XXXVII, D. 30).
Now it would be tedious to attempt a catalogue of all examples of
polar contrast or opposition: there is scarcely a text of Heraclitus
that would not have to be included. The pattern of antithesis struc-
tures his whole work, just as it structures the reality he is trying to
describe. In this sense the doctrine of opposites, like the thesis of
unity which is its counterpart, is coextensive with Heraclitus' thought
as a whole. Perhaps the only generalization which applies in every
case is that the opposition between the terms is obvious, whereas
some insight is required to grasp the harmonie binding them together.
210 Commentary: LXXXIV—LXXXVII (D. 27, 28, 86)
And this insight will generally involve recognition of a positive role
for what is prima facie a negative term. At the very least, the negative
term functions as a point of contrast by reference to which the
positive contrary is made conceptually definite and distinct; but the
link between the two is never merely conceptual.
My distinction between anthropocentric and cosmic oppositions is
somewhat artificial, since by allusion or direct juxtaposition (as in
CXXIII, D. 67) Heraclitus will insist upon the connections between
these two sets of terms. But the distinction has the merit of focussing
attention upon the crucial antithesis between life and death, formu-
lated in the riddle of the bow (LXXIX) and developed in the theory
of the psyche. This topic of life and death lies at the very point of
contact or fitting together of the cosmic and anthropocentric dimen-
sions in Heraclitus’ thought.
LXXXIV—LXXXVII
LXXXIV (D. 27) What awaits men at death they do not expect or even imagine.
LXXXV (D.28A) The great man is eminent in imagining things, and on this he
hangs his reputation for knowing it all.
LXXXVI (D. 86) Incredibility escapes recognition.
LXXXVII (D. 28B) Justice will catch up with those who invent lies and those
who swear to them.
LXXXIV announces a new doctrine of human destiny after death: it
raises the curtain on what we might call Heraclitus' eschatology, the
doctrine of the end or endlessness of human life. But for the moment
the curtain rises on a bare stage. It is only with the parallel between
death and sleep in LXXXIX and XC that Heraclitus gives us some hint
of his own conception of what awaits us when we die.
The two verbs that express men's ignorance in LXXXIV, elpontai
and dokeousin, are suggestive but ambiguous: elpontai ‘(what) they
expect’ can also mean '(what) they hope for’. Is the fate in store for
us better than our fondest hopes or worse than our grimmest expec-
tations? The point of LXXXIV is that we do not know; and the
choice of words is not designed to give us any further clues.?7? The
verb elpontai may recall another remark: ‘He who does not expect
will not find out the unexpected (anelpiston), for it is trackless and
unexplored' (VII, D. 18). This echo would indicate that the inquiry
Commentary: LXXXIV—LXXXVII (D. 27, 28, 86) 211
or search for wisdom will not be complete until it has resolved the
riddle of death.
The verb dokeousin, ‘they do not imagine’, contains another echo
of the fragments on human ignorance: most men 'do not recognize
(gindskousin) what they experience, but they believe their own
opinions’ (hedutoisi dokeousi in IV, D. 17). The self-delusion of men
in the face of death is of a piece with the complacent failure of in-
sight that characterizes their life throughout.
The theme of ‘seeming’, ‘imagination’ or ‘opinion’ represented by
the verb dokein provides the historical root for the metaphysical dis-
tinction between appearance and reality. This distinction was first
systematically drawn in the poem of Parmenides, where divine cog-
nition (поет) and truth are contrasted with mortal opinions (doxa:)
‘in which there is no true trust (pistis). But before Parmenides, and
before Heraclitus, Xenophanes had denied that a man can have clear
vision or certain knowledge of the most important matters and
insisted that we must be satisfied with guesswork (dokos, fr. 34) or
with opinions like unto truth (dedoxastho, fr. 35). Thus dokein in
LXXXIV invokes the notion of a typically human and typically
fallible type of cognition.?89 This same notion of dokein or guess-
work is taken up and played upon in LXXXV, where the eminence
of the man who enjoys public recognition and approval (ho doki-
moótatos) is contrasted with the shabby credentials of what he him-
self recognizes and accepts: dokeonta, mere seeming or imagining.?8!
The thematic resonance of dokeousin in LXXXIV and LXXXV,
together with the context of the second quotation in Clement,
suggests that LXXXV also implies some reference to the mystery of
the afterlife. (This would be confirmed if LXXXV was directly fol-
lowed by LXXXVII in Heraclitus’ text, as many editors have thought.)
If so, the great man of general esteem will be some supposed expert
on the afterlife, like Pythagoras.
There is not much to be made of the brief and enigmatic LXXXVI.
I include it in this context because of the play on gindskein (a poss-
ible echo of LXXXV) and because our sources (Plutarch and Clement)
both take apistze ‘incredulity’ or *incredibility in a sense relevant to
the mysteries of death and afterlife. For Plutarch the reference is to
ta theia, *divine (or supernatural) matters': it is because the truth in
these matters is so strange and difficult to credit that they succeed in
escaping our recognition.?82
Finally, LXX XVII announces that Justice will catch up with
212 Commentary: LXXXVIII (D. 96)
inventors of lies and those who testify on their behalf.?85 The role of
Dike here in regard to human transgressors recalls that of XLIV (D.
94), where she (with her ministers, the Furies) watches to see that
the sun does not exceed his measures. The parallel between cosmic
order and the human situation is what we have come to expect. What
is more surprising is the focus on lies and false testimony as the crimes
calling out for punishment. This is the only reference in the fragments
to falsehood as such, as distinct from ignorance and lack of under-
standing. The closest parallel to this charge of fabricating lies is the
accusation of ‘artful knavery' and ‘imposture’ directed at Pythagoras
(XXV—XXVI, D. 129 and 81). Hence it is natural to suppose that it
is not the poets and wise men generally but Pythagoras and his like,
the solemn mystifiers and specialists on the fate of the soul after
death, whom Heraclitus has in mind here.284
We are left wondering how Dike will take retribution. Heraclitus is
relying upon the traditional Greek feeling that ‘for great wrongdoings
(adikémata) there are great punishments sent by the gods’ (Hdt.
П.120.5). But our text does not tell us whether punishment will come
in this life or the next.
LXXXVIII
LXXXVIII (D. 96) Corpses should be thrown out quicker than dung.
No utterance of Heraclitus is better calculated to offend the normal
religious sensitivities of an ancient Greek than this contempt for the
cult of the dead, as every reader of the Antigone will recognize. The
shock effect of this aphorism made it one of the best known through-
out antiquity.?95 Even Heraclitus’ mockery of purification rites and
temple worship does not touch such deep feelings of piety as this
attack on the usual forms of ritual respect for the dead. Older than
the cults of the city and closer to every human being’s sense of his
own vulnerability, the mourning and burial of a kinsman represents
the most fundamental stratum of ancient religion. If Heraclitus
chooses to mock it in this extravagant way, that may be because he
touches here on the nerve center of his own preoccupations, because
he wishes to provoke us into an appreciation of the radical insight
which his predecessors have missed. Ordinary cult practice and
abstruse doctrine on the afterlife are equally remote from true under-
standing.
Behind its provocative character, the statement itself remains enig-
Commentary: LXXXIX (D. 21) and XC (D. 26) 218
matic. Perhaps there is some allusion to the return of the dead body
to the earth and its contribution, by way of its own decay, to the
renewal of life from the soil. Still, the comparison is scarcely flatter-
ing. It suggests that what awaits men at death is what awaits their
excrement and the offal of their farm animals. For Heraclitus any
other sense to death and any other continuation of life must be con-
cerned not with the corpse but with the element that has abandoned
it: the psyche or life-spirit.286
LXXXIX
LXXXIX (D. 21) Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep.
I have placed this carefully constructed sentence at the climax of
Heraclitus' riddling, the darkest moment following on a succession of
other mysteries (war distinguishing gods and men, justice apprehend-
ing liars, the surprise of death, corpses thrown out like dung) that
have not yet been resolved. The sentence opens with the promise of
a decisive clarification, a definition of death (‘Death is . . . °), whose
scope is surprisingly general: ‘all we can see’. But the restriction to
‘when we are awake’ is puzzling, and the next clause frustrates any
hope of clear information. Since sleep and waking are opposite states,
if what we see awake is death, then what we see asleep should be life
— or so the symmetry of the clauses leads us to expect. But when we
reach the last word, we find not ‘life’ but ‘sleep’.
Does Heraclitus mean after all to identify life with the private,
half-conscious, phantom experience of the dream world? Apparently
not, and that is why the sentence does not end as symmetry would
require. Why then does he deliberately arouse our expectations in
this misleading way?
Until we know what life is, we cannot understand the definition of
death: what does it exclude? And since much of what we see awake is
alive in the ordinary sense, in what extraordinary sense does death
include this visible realm of living plants and animals?
XC
XC(D.26) А тап strikes (haptetai) a light for himself in the night, when his
sight is quenched. Living, he touches (haptetat) the dead in his sleep; waking, he
touches (haptetat) the sleeper.
Here the word play on haptetai and aposbestheis, the two terms for
214 Commentary: XC (D. 26)
the kindling and quenching of ‘everliving fire’ in XXXVII (D. 30),
offers an initial clue for drawing together the cosmology and anthro-
pology of Heraclitus into a unified vision of life and death: it is the
phenomena of sleep and dreaming that may initiate us into these
mysteries,287
We have seen that one aspect of what awaits men at death can be
understood by attending to the fate of corpses which, like dung, are
reabsorbed into new life and vegetation by regression to more elemen-
tary forms. As Eliot put it, the earth is flesh, fur and faeces. Human
beings, like plants and animals, are ‘everliving’ in as much as their
bodies pass into the unending cycle of elemental transformation,
which is a cycle of life. This emergence of all bodily forms from the
perishing of what has gone before seems to provide the most plausible
reference for the enigmatic statement in LXXXIX that ‘death is all
things we see awake’: the death of old structures and organisms that
have yielded to something new.
The second part of LXXXIX (‘everything we see asleep’) refers to
the dream experience and thus to a different mode of transformation.
In XC Heraclitus pursues his reflection upon sleep, the twin of death,
as a partial revelation of the limitlessness of the psyche, that deep
logos that will not permit us to find the ends of the soul, ‘even if you
travel over every path’ (XXXV, D. 45). The description of our psychic
experience in terms of quenching and kindling suggests that the soul
must have its own mode of exemplifying the cycle of everliving fire,
its own mode of survival and revival where life and death will some-
how alternate like sleeping and waking. Hints of such a view are given
here in the play on haptesthai (‘lighting’ and ‘grasping’) and in other
stylistic peculiarities of XC.
The first sentence seems to be a straightforward description of
lamplighting at dusk. But there is the dramatic generality of the open-
ing words (anthrópos en euphronéi ‘human being in (the) night’) a
most unusual construction in the phrase ‘strikes (haptetaz) a light for
himself’, and an implicit suggestion that some other light is being
replaced.?88 Above all, there is the curious wording of aposbestheis
opseis, which literally says that he, the man and not his eyes, has
been extinguished like a lamp. The fall of night is thus depicted as a
kind of death, a quenching of personal fire.289
These hints are more fully worked out in the next sentence, where
the sense of haptetai shifts from ‘kindles’ to ‘touches, grasps’: ‘Living,
he touches the dead in his sleep.’ It is difficult to see how this can
refer to anything but the dream experience of the psyche, in Pindar's
Commentary: XC (D. 26) 215
phrase the ‘phantom of life’ (aiónos eidoólon), which ‘sleeps when the
limbs are active but shows to sleeping men in many dreams' the vision
of things not seen by day.*99 Unlike Pindar, Heraclitus refuses to
admit a more penetrating psychic life in dreams: in sleep ‘all we see is
sleep'. At nightfall we have lost our contact with the daylight, the
fire that is shared. So each one is obliged to strike a light ‘for himself’.
(Compare VI, D. 89, on sleep as a turning-away from what is com-
mon.) The experience of nightfall is one of isolation, where the indi-
vidual, in his own person, reflects the quenching of diurnal fire. Like
the lighting of the lamp, the dream experience is a weaker counterpart
for the lucid fire of the day. The juxtaposition of XC and LXXXIX
suggests a contrast between this private encounter with the dead in
the flickering light of sleep and the more public vision of death that
is given in all our waking hours.
‘Waking (literally ‘having awakened’), he touches the sleeper.’ With
its own form of ring structure, XC ends by a return to the point from
which it began its descent into the darker regions of the psyche. How
does the waking man grasp the sleeper? Presumably not as one man
awake touches another man asleep, but rather by the contact of
memory and physical continuity between the awakened sleeper and his
own former self in sleep. The riddle lies less in the statement itself
than in its studied parallelism with what precedes. Why should the
waking continuity with the dream self be assimilated to the dream
experience of contact with the dead? And why are both experiences
presented as formal parallels to the lighting of a lamp at nightfall?
We are surrounded by a thicket of riddles, but a pattern begins to
emerge: a sequence of psychic stages linked to one another by a thread
of quenchings and lightings and ending by a cyclical return to the
starting point. The failure of ordinary visual experience at nightfall
is compensated by the lighting of a lamp. Our waking consciousness
is in turn ‘put out’ in sleep, but we kindle for ourselves a new lamp,
and thus make contact with the realm of the dead — a realm which is
‘touched’ but not entered, since the sleeper is still alive. The final
stage, when the sleeper awakes, is a return to the initial daytime state,
but now ‘in touch’ with all that precedes.
Every stage but the last one represents an increase of darkness and
death over daylight and life — a kind of psychic descent into the under-
world. In this respect the pattern of night-time, sleeping and waking
parallels the elemental stages outlined in CII (D. 36), which represent
the ‘death’ of psyche into inert forms and its rebirth from these
elements. Since some parallel to a physical or cosmic cycle is strongly
216 Commentary: XCI (D. 75) and XCII (D. 62)
suggested by the terminology of ‘quenching’ and ‘kindling’, there has
been a temptation to interpret XC in elemental terms, as when Kirk
speaks of the soul in sleep 'approaching the completely watery state
which means its thanatos’ or death.??! But no physical doctrine is
stated in XC; and there is no clear basis in the fragments for a stage-
by-stage correlation of waking and sleeping with the elemental cycle
of CII (D. 36).
Neither CII nor XC says anything about a destiny of the psyche
that rises above its normal waking state, whose vision was equated
with death in LXXXIX. In this sense the whole range of ordinary
human experience, asleep or awake, can be seen as so many different
stages in a cycle of death. Where then is true life to be found? This
question can only be answered from other fragments: XCII, XCIII,
and CIX (D. 118).
XCI
XCI(D.75) Marcus Aurelius: [Heraclitus says, I think, that men asleep are
laborers and co-workers in what takes place in the world.]
The emperor in his meditations cites from memory, without great
concern for accuracy. Hence XCI is at best a free paraphrase, and
some editors count it only as a reminiscence of I.3: ‘men are forget-
ful of (do not notice) what they do asleep’ (so Marcovich, p. 10).
It seems more likely that Marcus here, like Plutarch in VI (D. 89), is
recalling some statement on the sleeper otherwise lost, so that XCI
would form a pendant to VI: in sleep a man turns away from the
common world of the waking, but he is never altogether ‘out of
touch’, But the indication here is too vague to add anything substan-
tial to our understanding of Heraclitus' conception of sleep.
XCII
XCII (D. 62) Immortals <are> mortal, mortals immortal, living the others’
death, dead in the others' life.
This is in point of form Heraclitus’ masterpiece, the most perfectly
symmetrical of all the fragments. The first two clauses of two words
each (with copula unexpressed in Greek) are mirror images, identical
but for the word order: a-b-b-a. The third and fourth clauses involve
more complex inversions: to the participle ‘living’ in the third clause
Commentary: XCII (D. 62) 217
corresponds the noun ‘life’ in the fourth; and conversely for ‘death’
in the former and ‘dead’ in the latter. The symmetry is again rein-
forced by chiastic order: participle, noun phrase; noun phrase, par-
ticiple. The two-to-two, four-to-four structuring of these twelve
words points to some tight pattern of unity between life and death
whose exact content is not easy to make out.
The interpretation poses two distinct problems: what is Heraclitus’
own meaning here? and what is the place of this utterance in the
Greek tradition of speculation about the afterlife? It is only the first
question which directly concerns us; the second problem will be
briefly touched on.
XCII asserts some equivalence between mortals and immortals by
an interchange of death and life; it is the mode of interchange that is
problematic. As a starting point for literal exegesis we may assume
that the mortals and immortals mentioned here are the same as in the
usual notion of men and gods, who are distinguished by War in
LXXXIII (D. 53). Since the terms ‘men’ and ‘mortals’, ‘gods’ and
‘immortals’ are practically synonymous in Greek, it would be arbitrary
to take them otherwise here unless we have some special reason to do
so. Hence on a first interpretation we assign ‘death’ and ‘dying’ only
to mortal men. The second half of XCII then says: ‘they (the gods)
live our death; we are dead in their life’. On this, which I will call the
weak reading, there is no reference to the death of the gods. The
thought is: *we mortal men are immortal in that our death is really a
new kind of (divine) life; they, the gods, are mortal not because they
die but because their life is derived from our death'.
A stronger interpretation will reverse the roles of men and gods, as
the symmetry of the clauses seems to require. But first we develop
the implications of the weaker reading, in which immortals are
defined as beings whose life is nourished by our death. What beings
are these? The initial reference must be to elemental bodies or powers
— water, earth, and the funerary fire — into which our bodies, and
perhaps our psyches also, pass after death. But the beings who live
from our death should include also new forms of life that spring up
from the earth: the grass, the budding plants and trees, the flowers of
Greek autumn and spring, as well as those worms and other animals
believed to be born from the soil. Now these beings are themselves
mortal. So to pursue this thought will bring us to the second, stronger
interpretation, where mortals and immortals change places with one
another.
In other respects also the weaker reading pushes us in the same
218 | Commentary: XCII (D. 62)
direction. For instance, if the death of mortals is life for immortals,
then the latter will include elemental water, since (according to CII,
D. 36) what is death for the (human) psyche is birth for water. Hence
water is one of the ‘immortals’ who live from our death. But by the
same token water is a ‘mortal’, since its death is the birth of earth
(СП, D. 36). Or if we think of the death of mortals here in terms of
the ‘extinction’ of night-time and sleeping in XC (D. 26), then the
immortals will be represented by successive psychic states that come
to life as our normal consciousness is quenched in darkness and sleep.
Included among these ‘immortals’ will be the nocturnal psyche and
the dead whom we encounter in dreams. So once again we end up
with the stronger reading: the immortals turn out to include not only
the mortals but the dead.
I conclude that no weak reading, which preserves the traditional
dichotomy between mortals and immortals, can stand as a complete
interpretation of XCII. And a strict equivalence between the two
classes is strongly suggested by the formal reversibility of the first
four words, where it makes no difference which term we take as sub-
ject, which as predicate. If we take the first pair of terms as affirming
that mortals are immortal, the second will affirm that immortals are
mortal, and conversely. But if it makes no difference which term is
subject, then it makes no difference which term serves as antecedent
for the possessive pronoun ‘their’ (ekeinón) in the two following
clauses. The weaker reading construes the two occurrences of this
pronoun in two different ways: the immortal gods live our death, the
death of mortals; whereas we mortals are dead in their life, in the life
of the gods. On the strong reading, accepting full equivalence, we
reverse the antecedents and have:
Mortals live the death of immortals.?9?
Immortals are dead in the life of mortals.
For the ordinary Greek view of the gods these claims are extraordi-
narily shocking — scarcely less so than the contempt which Heraclitus
expresses for the ritual regard for the dead. In early poetry and myth,
freedom from death is the essential characteristic of the gods: mor-
tality 1s what separates the human condition from the divine. By
asserting the mortality of the gods in XCII, Heraclitus breaks com-
pletely with traditional Greek piety. This heretical doctrine finds
some curious echoes in the literature of the fifth and fourth centuries,
as we shall see. But before considering these parallels, we must pursue
one step further the interpretation of XCII within the context of
Heraclitus’ own thought.
Commentary: XCII (D. 62) 219
For a full interpretation, the strong reading requires two theses
which reinforce one another and which may be seen as complemen-
tary aspects of a single claim: (1) the reversibility of the process of
death, by analogy with sleeping and waking, day and night, summer
and winter, and (2) the complete relativization or generalization of
the notion of death, conceived as any change of state in which some-
thing old gives way before something drastically new. Hence it will
not be a metaphor to speak of the death of water (for instance, in
evaporation) or of the death of day at nightfall, any more than it is
metaphorical to speak of the dying out of spring vegetation in the
long drought of Greek summer. Human death — the death of each of
us, and of those dear to us — will have to be understood as a phenom-
enon of precisely the same sort, a change of state within the total life
cycle of nature. This thought will be developed in XCIII.
We may now note some historical parallels to this paradoxical view.
Since the basic axiom of traditional Greek piety is that the gods are
immortal, to speak of their death is the gravest sort of blasphemy.?9?
In the case of the one god, Dionysus, whose death was recounted in
a myth of the classical period, the evidence is too obscure and com-
plicated to be discussed here. What is clear is that Herodotus, when
he refers to a comparable Egyptian myth concerning Osiris (whom he
identified with Dionysus), is always careful to hedge his report with
something like mystic silence: *who it is they mourn on this occasion,
it is not pious (Aosion) for me to say’.29* But if to speak of the death
of a single god is an act of sacrilege, what are we to say of the general
pronouncement that ‘immortals are mortal’? As Wilamowitz observed,
at Athens Heraclitus would have been put to death for impiety.
I do not know of any true parallel in the classical period to this
insistence upon the mortality of the immortals. Empedocles does
speak of powers ‘swiftly growing mortal (thnéta) which had previously
learned to be immortal (athanata)’ (fr. 35.14). Empedocles may be
echoing Heraclitus, but his context is cosmogonic and allegorical: he
is referring to the formation of mortal compounds from the combi-
nation of elemental principles, under the influence of Love. Thus,
although there is a genuine affinity of doctrine, the esoteric verses of
Empedocles have nothing like the provocative force of XCII. It seems
unlikely that any pious Greek was scandalized by this passage.
On the other hand the converse assertion, that a mortal can become
а god, is announced by Empedocles in another poem, his Katharmo:
or ‘Purifications’, in terms that must have been regarded as provocative:
‘I greet you, I an immortal god, mortal no longer.'??5 To find a
220 Commentary: XCIII (D. 88)
parallel to this extraordinary pronouncement in the classical period
we must look to the mystic promise preserved on two of the gold
tablets from Thurii in South Italy, buried with a body in the grave:
‘Fortunate and most blessed, you will be a god instead of a mortal.’296
Now the claim that a mortal may become a god, however presump-
tuous it may sound in the fifth century, has at least a mythic prece-
dent in the story of Heracles’ acceptance among the Olympians. The
related thesis, that this human life is in reality the death of a higher
being, is much more esoteric. Again we find a hint of such a view in
the Purtfications of Empedocles, where the body is described as an
‘alien garment of flesh’ (fr. 126) and birth seems to be referred to as
the unwelcome arrival in an unfamiliar place, to be greeted by
funereal cries and lamentation (fr. 118; cf. 119 and 125). Even closer
parallels to XCII can be found in Attic literature:
Who knows if life be death, but death in turn
be recognized below as life? (Euripides, fr. 638 Nauck)
Plato quotes these Euripidean verses in the Gorgias (492E) as evidence
for the view that ‘perhaps we are truly dead’; and he speaks in this
connection of a doctrine that regards the body (sóma) as the tomb
(séma) of the soul.
This is not the place to discuss the origins and ramifications of this
non-standard view of the human psyche; my point was simply to illus-
trate the affinity of language between XCII and certain mystic doc-
trines associated with the so-called Orphic, more accurately
Pythagorean, tradition. But it does not follow from the fact that
Heraclitus uses the language of this tradition that he accepts the view
of the psyche which it implies. The monistic tendency of his own
thought is really incompatible with the doctrine of an individual
psyche migrating from body to body. Heraclitus makes use of this
mystic language in part for its shock effect, to suggest the drastic
novelty of his own insight into the unity of life and death, the radically
‘unexpected’ truth that awaits men beyond the grave.
XCIII
XCIII (D. 88) The same ...: living and dead, and the waking and the sleeping,
and young and old. For these transposed are those, and those transposed again
are these.297
As a basis for the interpretation for XCIII, I recall the two comple-
mentary principles enunciated above: (1) the reversibility of the pro-
Commentary: XCIII (D. 88) 221
cess of death, by analogy with the alternation of sleeping and waking
and with the return of the seasons of the year, and (2) the generaliz-
ation of the notion of death, conceived as any change of state in
which something old gives way before something radically new. The
first thesis, implied by XCII, is here stated explicitly. The correspond-
ing generalization or relativization of the concept of death, which
seems implicit in both XCII and XCIII, is more directly documented
by CII (D. 36), if we take the reference to the 'death' of water and
earth quite literally. Both the literal interpretation of CII and the
generalized notion of death are entailed by the panpsychism I have
attributed to Heraclitus on the basis of XXXI (D. 113) and XXXV
(D. 45). (By the usual hermeneutical circle, this attribution is now
confirmed by its application to XCII, XCIII, and СП.) And of course
some unity between life and death, including some positive evaluation
of the negative term, follows from Heraclitus’ central conception of
the harmonié or fitting together of opposites, as was seen in the dis-
cussion of LXXVIII (D. 51) and LXXIX (D. 48). What remains to be
shown is how these various doctrines are connected in a coherent
view of life-beyond-death for the human being or for the psyche.
It is natural to begin by a comparison with the Pythagorean doc-
trine of transmigration, for this must have served as point of depar-
ture for Heraclitus’ own view of the afterlife. The Pythagorean doc-
trine satisfies my principle of reversibility by positing a process of
rebirth (in a new body) as the converse of dying (when the psyche
leaves its previous body). It also involves a relativization of the notion
of death, insofar as birth and death are both interpreted as a change
of state for the psyche rather than as radical coming-to-be and passing-
away. To this extent, there is a genuine affinity between Heraclitus’
thought and the mystic view of the soul, which justifies the affinity
of language already noted. But the Pythagorean doctrine implies a
basic disparity between the destiny of the deathless psyche and that
of the mortal body, and hence a fundamental dualism between the
realms of the animate (or deathless) and inanimate (or mortal). It is
precisely here that Heraclitus’ view diverges in virtue of his monism,
which in this context means his panpsychism, and his extension of
the notion of death to any radical change of state. The statement of
CII (D. 36), that the psyche which dies is reborn as water and the
water which dies is reborn as earth, can be seen as a generalization of
the doctrine of transmigration for the whole cycle of elemental
transformations, in which every stage is simultaneously a death and a
rebirth. (Thus Heraclitus has extended the Pythagorean cycle of re-
222 Commentary: XCIII (D. 88)
birth to the general Milesian conception of elemental coming-to-be
and passing-away expressed in the fragment of Anaximander.) Since
the Pythagoreans themselves had emphasized the continuity between
different forms of life — human, animal, vegetable — their view could
be formulated by Plato as the claim that ‘all nature is akin’ (Meno
81C9). The panpsychism of Heraclitus is perhaps best understood
as an insistence upon taking this claim literally, together with a will-
ingness to draw the most radical consequences from it for the inter-
pretation of human destiny. As XCIII indicates by the parallel to
waking and sleeping, youth and age, and the claim that all these are
*the same', the alternation of psychic death and rebirth in a new
form, by which the dead become the living and ‘these are transposed
as those’, is then only a special case of the general law of nature with
its rhythmic alternation between opposite poles, as in the mutual
succession of night and day, the annual tropa? of the sun and seasons.
This was perfectly understood by Plato, who introduces the doctrine
of the rebirth of souls from the dead in the Phaedo as a conclusion
from the more general theory concerning ‘all animals and plants and
all things that have a coming-to-be (genesis), a theory which argues
in impeccable Heraclitean form that in every case 'they come to be as
opposites from opposites, and in no other way’ (Phaedo 70D—E).
Now the natural objection to this generalized view of immortality
and the reversibility of death — an objection which the mystic doc-
trine of reincarnation seeks to avoid — is that it is always something
new that is reborn, and not the same entity as before. Just as yester-
day and tomorrow are not the same day, and last summer and next
summer are not the same season, so it will never be the same man
who, after growing old, becomes young again, nor will it be the same
human being who can hope to be reborn after his death. And there-
fore, this objection runs, there is a crucial disanalogy between these
cases and phenomena like sleeping and waking, where the psyche
undergoes a fundamental change of state but remains one and the
same throughout. The analogy articulated in XCIII thus fails to take
account of the central feature of personal identity, the fact of psycho-
physical continuity established both by memory and by bodily per-
sistence between the man awake and his former self asleep, as between
the waking man now and his earlier waking state. But there is no com-
parable identity or continuity between the man living and the man
dead (except for the persistence of his bodily components in their
slow return to the elements), and none at all between the old man
and some future state of youth. Consequently, the principle of rever-
Commentary: XCIII (D. 88) 223
sibility posited by the analogy to sleep fails utterly in the case of
death and aging. Any hope of survival or revival which rests upon this
analogy must be fallacious, and can offer no real consolation either
for our individual death or for our experience of diminution in old
age.
This objection is a crucial one, and the answer to it will bring out
more clearly the radical nature of Heraclitus’ thought about life and
death. For his answer must take the form of a fundamental denial of
the notions of personal and psychic identity as ordinarily conceived.
I think there is no doubt that Heraclitus would confidently reject the
charge of fallacy and would insist that the alleged disanalogy is a snare
and a delusion. In reality, neither our bodies nor our psyches are, in
the strict sense, ever one and the same from one moment to the next:
they are continually undergoing radical transformation, dying and
being reborn again at every instant. Once more Plato has rendered
Heraclitus’ thought with complete fidelity, in the passage already
cited from the Symposium (207D—208B, above, p. 167). But let the
old riddler speak for himself.
*As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow
upon them’ (L, D. 12). The identity of the river is one of form and
physical continuity, but not of material identity or preservation of
the same content. And as the reference to men stepping in makes
clear, this coexistence of continuity with massive change is under-
stood in terms of the human experience of a world that is funda-
mentally stable but never really the same. If you look for strict
identity, ‘you cannot step twice into the same river’.298 That is to say,
the lack of identity between one day or one summer and the next is
exactly paralleled by the lack of identity between one moment of our
experience and another moment of our experience of ‘the same thing’.
Even in the case of personal continuity between the sleeping and
waking man, between the dream self and the everyday self, the
relationship is one of psychic contiguity or contact, not strict identity:
the waking ‘touches’ (haptetaz) the sleeping in memory, as the living
sleeper touches the dead in dreaming (XC, D. 26). Thus there is just
as much, and just as little, unity and identity between a man and his
dreams, between a man and his past self and past experience, as
between a man and his offspring (see XCV and XCVIII below), or
between a man and his lasting fame (XCVII); and just as much and as
little identity between one elemental form and its successor, or be-
tween the river today and the river tomorrow.
Still, the objection has not been fully answered. For if we under-
224 Commentary: XCIII (D. 88)
stand (as I think we must) the Heraclitean river-of-flux doctrine in
the way that has just been indicated, the objector may respond as
follows. Even if there is no such thing as absolute identity over time
for individual persons or objects, nevertheless there are different
grades of relative identity. In the case of persons, there is first the
phenomenon of physical continuity (from time to time and from
place to place) for a body of the same general form, with massive
overlap of the same material constituents from one interval to the
next — the kind of identity over time which human beings share with
physical objects such as stones or trees, and which lasts beyond their
death as long as the body remains more or less intact. And there is
also the fact of psychological continuity with the same self in the past
and in the future. This psychic continuity, which we tend to think of
as distinctly human (though it must be shared to some extent by
other animals as well) connects me with my past self not only by
explicit memories but also by the entire pattern of habits, skills,
preferences, nostalgias, phobias, and recurrent moods — by the entire
pattern of my personality as a legacy from childhood and adolescence,
down to my delightful or irritating experiences of yesterday or of five
minutes ago. On the other hand, this same psychic continuity con-
nects me with my future self not only by the persistence, more or less
unchanged, of this elaborate pattern from the past, but also by the
constant projectioa of myself into the future, by way of hopes and
fears for tomorrow, by long- and short-run plans for actions, ambitions
for future achievements and rewards, forboding of future losses
(including the death of those dear to me, and also my own death), a
whole range of prepared responses for coming contingencies of all
sorts. Now the importance of the first concept, the thought of physical
or bodily continuity beyond death, is reflected in all the immense
variety of ancient funeral cult and grave adornment, but most strik-
ingly in the Egyptian practice of mummification, designed precisely
to preserve the recognizable form of an individual body. On the other
hand, the psychic continuity beyond death is presupposed, in some
sense, by all concern with the future of one's fame and of one's fam-
ily, including perhaps the concern for one's own burial — as if one
were to be among the spectators — and for future remembrance in
the regular tending of one's grave. But in this perspective the most
striking expression of a concern for future psychic continuity, corre-
sponding in principle to the practice of mummification for the pres-
ervation of bodily identity, is the Pythagorean doctrine of a recollec-
tion of previous existences, with the corresponding importance in the
Commentary: XCIII (D. 88) 225
eschatology of the South Italian gold tablets of the promise of a drink
from the waters of Memory, the cool drink from the lake of
Mnemosyne in the world below, that will permit the dead to retain
the essential psychic contact with his personal past in the future state
that awaits him.?99
Such is our ordinary, pre-philosophic concept of personal identity
or individual survival in its double form, bodily and psychic. Quite
distinct is our notion of generic or specific identity, as when one
horse or one tree is replaced by another, or when parents are replaced
by children who become parents in turn in successive generations. It
is this notion of generic survival, or replacement in kind, that is
exemplified by the sequence of days and of seasons, and in a different
way also by the waters that are continually being replaced within a
given гімег.300
Finally, there is a third, and again different notion of replacement
or survival in which the principle of generic identity or likeness of
kind is given up, as when plants are consumed by animals, or when
dung and corpses are reabsorbed into the earth and the elements, or
when one element such as water yields to another element such as
earth, according to Heraclitus’ own doctrine. Here there is a certain
notion of physical continuity from one state to the next, and a regular
sequence of stages, but no sense in which any likeness of kind or
definite form is preserved.39!
Our objection against Heraclitus’ view of the interchange of living
and dead, young and old in XCIII can now be reformulated as the
claim that he systematically blurs the distinction between these three
kinds of ‘survival’, characterized by (1) some preservation of psychic
or bodily individuality, (2) the maintenance or recurrence of the same
generic form, and (3) regularity in the sequence of changes, with some
continuity between stages but no preservation of individual or even
generic identity. What men ordinarily desire is individual survival in
the first sense, which is promised to them in some measure by the
various grave cults of antiquity, and even by the dismal Homeric pic-
ture of the psychai as phantoms of men in the world below, but which
finds its most perfect fulfillment in the mystic promise of future bliss
(whether pagan or Christian). It is the second form, generic survival or
replacement by another individual of the same kind, which is repre-
sented in the desire for offspring and in the practice of naming a male
child after the grandfather or some other older relative. However, if
Heraclitus’ generalization of the notion of death is taken seriously, so
that the death of water and the birth of earth are to be regarded as
226 Commentary: XCIII (D. 88)
strictly parallel to the death and birth of an individual human being,
this has the effect of reducing the first two forms of survival to the
third. But the third form of continuity in change is mere transformation,
the production of something new with the annihilation of what has
gone before, so that neither individual survival nor likeness of kind is
maintained.
To this natural objection I believe the true Heraclitean response
will be: *You have entirely misunderstood my doctrine. Yes, I do
reduce all sorts of change and survival to one type, but it is to the sec-
ond and not to the third: to likeness of kind and identity of struc-
ture, which the river illustrates by preserving its form while all the
individuating matter has been replaced: the river as a concrete indi-
vidual is ever dying and being reborn, as “other and again other
waters” are ever pouring in. And this identity of pattern holds gener-
ally for nature as a whole: it includes the constant structure of the
year, within which the seasons change, as well as the constant unit of
the night-and-day, within which the relative length of the night and
of the day will vary according to the seasons. So even if (as I am will-
ing to grant) Anaximander or some other theorist was right to sup-
pose that the formation of the world will be balanced in time by its
destruction, so that the ruling principle of fire will eventually con-
sume all things in a regular exchange between itself as fire and itself
as cosmos, even so the unity of the whole pattern will be preserved,
within which all the parts must change and recur with likeness of
kind. In short, the only identical individual is the cosmic process as
a whole, with its cycle of recurrence over the longest year, whatever
time and pattern this cycle of transformations may take; but its unity
of structure is guaranteed by the regular recurrence of the same
forms, by likeness of kind, as defined by the permanent tension and
rhythmic alternation between opposites at every level: from individual
birth and death to the daily lighting and quenching of the sun; from
the birth and death of the elements to the eternal kindling and
extinction of cosmic fire. This is the sense of personal identity and
personal survival which I have come to recognize: the unity of all
things in the wise one alone, which I found when I set out in search
of myself.’
Thus it is the recognition of this common pattern in the part and
the whole, this universal law of polar tension and the regular pendu-
lum swing back and forth between opposites, the endless recurrence
of ‘everliving fire’ in the same forms, which provides the only con-
solation there is or could be for human aging and death. Perhaps the
Commentary: XCIV (D. 52) 227
greatest surprise that awaits us at our death is that things will not be
very different, since we are and always have been familiar with the
experience of continually dying and continually being reborn.
XCIV
XCIV (D. 52) Lifetime (aión) is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. King-
ship belongs to the child.
My own solution to this most enigmatic of Heraclitean riddles is
indicated by the translation of pesseuón as ‘moving pieces in a game’,
where this is understood as an echo of ‘things transposed’ (meta-
pesonta) in XCIII (D. 88). What was there said to be moved back and
forth was ‘living and dead, and the waking and the sleeping, and
young and old’. Such reversals constitute the very principle of cosmic
order. More specifically, these three pairs define the structure of
human experience as an alternating pattern of being kindled and
going out. On my view the fundamental thought is not the childlike
and random movements of the game (as some interpreters have
supposed) but the fact that these moves follow a definite rule, so that
after one side plays it is the other’s turn, and after the victory is
reached the play must start over from the beginning. The rules of the
pessoi-game thus imitate the alternating measures of cosmic fire.
My interpretation assumes a continuity of thought and imagery
between XCIII (D. 88) and XCIV (D. 52). This continuity would be
guaranteed if we could be sure that the game of pessoi envisaged in
XCIV involved the use of dice, like modern tavli or backgammon (as
Marcovich suggests, p. 494). For the verb metapesein for ‘trans-
positions’ in XCIII has the literal sense of ‘fall out otherwise’ and
could immediately suggest the fall of a die. But whether or not we
bring dice into this game the verb теѓареѕет will remain relevant to
XCIV, since it is a synonym of other verbs (metatithenai and meta-
ballein) that typically describe moving pieces on a board.50?
If we agree, then, to take the back-and-forth movement of XCIII
(with its cosmic and human applications) as a clue for understanding
the pessoi-game in XCIV, we are left with three puzzles to unravel:
(1) Why is the player named azon ‘lifetime’?
(2) Why is he called ‘a child at play’ (pais paizon)?
(3) Why is the child described as a king?
Any answer to (2) is likely to seem conjectural; the first and third
puzzles admit of rather straightforward solutions.
228 | Commentary: XCIV (D. 52)
(1) Aion has the sense ‘vitality’, (human) life’, as when Pindar calls
the soul ‘the image of [the man's] абл’ (fr. 116 Bowra). On this
sense is based the standard usage of the word for ‘lifetime’, ‘duration
(of a life)’, which, under the influence of the cognate adverb atei
(‘always’, ‘forever’) eventually makes аібп a synonym for ‘time’
(chronos). Finally, in Plato's Timaeus and thereafter, a?ón acquires
the technical sense of timeless ‘eternity’ as contrasted with temporal
duration. This later technical sense is irrelevant here. But the whole
range of other meanings, from human lifetime to larger temporal
periods, are all properly suggested by the name of the player whose
game includes both the movements of human life and death and the
back-and-forth reversals of the cosmos.
(3) It is obvious why the player possesses ‘kingship’, since the game
is a cosmic one, and the player must be lord of the universe, like the
pilot who ‘steers all things’ according to LIV (D. 41) and CXIX (D.
64). Now the only other text where this ruling principle is called ‘king’
is LXXXIII (D. 53), where War is ‘father of all and king of all’,
appointing some as gods, others as men, some slave, others free. If we
bear in mind the equation-by-transposition of mortals and immortals
in XCII, we see that the games played by Lifetime and by War have
the same structure. Just as the bow, whose work is death, is named
‘life’ (bios), so the king of conflict and destruction can be called ‘life-
time’ (aión).
(2) The hardest question is why the king, designated ‘father’ in
LXXXIII (D. 53), appears here as a child at play, ‘playing the child’.
The triple occurrence of the stem ‘child’ (pais, paizon, paidos) does
not seem fully explained by the fact that pesso: is a children's game.
At the risk of yielding to free association, I propose some connec-
tion with the theme of father-son transpositions in the cycle of gener-
ations developed in XCV (D. A19) and XCVIII (D.20).595 The 'ever-
lasting child’ (taking aión pais together, with a play on aei бп ог
aeizóon ‘everliving’, as in XXXVII, D. 30) remains forever youthful,
even infantile, throughout his ‘lifetime’, playing his endless game and
maintaining his eternal kingship by a series of births and deaths across
the generations, by the endless begetting of children. The father thus
sees the ‘kingship’ — the initiative, the first move in the game — pass
to his son, who becomes a father in turn and is confronted with the
same game.
Also possible here is the commentators' suggestion of arbitrary or
random movement, as in the cast of the dice: a truly childish game
not guided by mature intelligence or reasonable plan. This would pre-
Commentary: XCV (D. A19) 229
sent a paradoxical counterpart to the insistence elsewhere on the
wisdom of the cosmic principle that is more than a match for Zeus
(CXVIII, D. 32). This notion of a witless or arbitrary ruler might be
understood as a parallel to CXXV (D. 124): as the finest kosmos or
adornment is produced by random sweepings, so the wise balance of
the universe emerges from the thoughtless movements of a child at
play.
XCV
XCVA(D.A19) Plutarch: [A generation is thirty years according to Heraclitus,
in which time the progenitor has engendered one who generates.]
XCVB (D. A19) Censorinus: [Heraclitus is the authority for calling thirty years
a generation, because the cycle of life lies in this interval. He calls the cycle of
life «the interval until nature returns from human seed-time to seed-time.]
There has been some confusion over the literal meaning of this state-
ment, a confusion which goes back to an ancient variant and which,
despite its careful correction by Fránkel and Kirk, has not been
eliminated from the most recent commentaries.90* The confusion lies
in counting the generational period of thirty years from the birth of
the grandfather to the birth of his grandson, i.e. as a cycle of two
generations by any normal count, instead of from a father's begetting
of a son to the son's becoming a father in turn. It is the latter interval,
from one begetting to the next, that is described by both Plutarch
and Censorinus; and the period of thirty years corresponds to a
natural cycle of human generations, as will be seen in a moment.
There is no reason to take seriously the other interpretation, even
though the mistake is as old as Philo.305
The error is a natural one, since the text reflected in Plutarch
describes the father-son relationship as repeated indefinitely, so that
the father becomes the grandfather as the son begets in turn. Thus a
man becomes a grandfather thirty years after he becomes a father.
From this mention of the third generation some ancient author, per-
haps Philo himself, drew the biologically correct but humanly un-
interesting observation that thirty years is the earliest age at which
one can become a grandfather! Since no Greek male was the father
of a legitimate child at the age of 15, this theoretical doubling of the
time required for puberty is quite irrelevant to the thought of XCV.
A generation is the interval between parents and children, not be-
tween grandparents and grandchildren.
230 | Commentary: XCV (D. A19)
Thirty years may seem an arbitrary number, but there is good evi-
dence for the social and historical reality of this figure, which
scholars sometimes use as a basis for calculating dates from genealo-
gical lists. Thus it is Hesiod's advice that a man should marry around
the age of thirty (Works and Days 696f.); and three centuries later
Plato specifies that the age of marriage should be between 25 and 35,
or 30 and 35.396 In a careful anthropological study of one of the
most archaic societies of Greece today, the semi-nomadic Sarakatsani
shepherds of the Zagori mountains in northwest Greece, J.K. Campbell
reports that the sons are normally married at about the age of 30.307
Now in a traditional society, where marriage is quite deliberately
undertaken in view of procreation, a man who marries around the age
of thirty can generally expect to become a father within a year. Of
course the first child may not be a son. But if it is, and if the son
marries in turn at thirty, the situation described by Heraclitus will be
realized. Hesiod and Plato indicate that this happened quite often in
ancient Greece, as it does today (or did yesterday, since the study
relates to 1945—55) among the Sarakatsani, where 58 out of 123
sons married at the age of 30 of 31, and most of the others married
within a year or two of that age.
The human significance of this period, where the son assumes in
turn the role of father, can be seen in Campbell’s description of a con-
cretely observed society.
Although the late date of marriage of brothers is not unconnected
with the duty of first discharging obligations towards the sisters
before a man acquires a family of his own, it is not a simple
correlation. It is also related to the balance of power between
father and son. If a man marries at the age of 30 and his first son
is born a year later, this son will in turn reach the age of 30 when
his father is in his early sixties, an age at which he becomes
physically incapable of the strenuous life that the executive head
of a shepherd family necessarily leads . . . He must, then, bow to
the inevitable, arrange the marriage of his son and in a short time
(at the birth of his first grandchild) hand over control; for, as we
have stressed, it is not compatible with the values of this com-
munity for a married man with a child to be still under parental
control and not master in his own house. But fathers do not nor-
mally hand over control until they have to. (Honour, Family, and
Patronage, pp. 83f.)
The life and values of contemporary Sarakatsani shepherds are not
those of the citizens of Ephesus in 500 B.C. But in the rude conditions
Commentary: XCVI (D. 25) 231
of existence for their joint families, they illustrate in a very striking
way the succession of power and vitality, the exchange between age
and youth, father and son, in the endless, repetitive game played by
Lifetime (aon).
For the connections between this human cycle of 30 years and the
cosmic cycle of 10,800 years in the ‘great year’, see above on XLIII
(D. A18 and A5). The conflict and succession of generations is the
central human instance of the pattern of opposition and exchange be-
tween the old and the new, between life and death: the pattern of
renewal by destruction and recurrence. The father dies, and is replaced
by his son, who buries his father but continues his life, biologically
and also ritually in the tendence of his grave. *Mortals are immortal,
immortals mortal.'308
XCVI
XCVI (D. 25) Greater deaths (moroi) are allotted greater destinies (mora).
Formally speaking, this is another gem of artful construction in
miniature. Of the five words of XCVI, the first four begin with the
same letter. The first and fourth are cognates and near-synonyms
(moroi, moirai), masculine and feminine noun-formations from the
root of meiromai ‘to receive as one's share’; here they correspond
syntactically as subject and object of the verb. The second and third
words represent the same adjective, structured syntactically by agree-
ment with the corresponding noun (mezones, mezonas). Thus the
syntactic pattern is a-a-b-b, but in meaning and morphology it is
al-b-b-a?. The tight antiphonal symmetry is relieved by the longer
and phonetically unrelated final word lanchanousi, whose meaning is
closely akin to the root of moros and тога: ‘(receive as) one's share
or portion’, At first sight the fragment is a mystifying tautology:
‘greater portions have allotted to them greater shares’.
Though etymologically sound, this trivial reading cannot suffice.
The meaning of moros as ‘portion’ or ‘lot’ survives only in a few tech-
nical uses; from Homer on, the term acquires the literary sense of
‘doom’ or ‘violent death’.399 The cognate moira does have a wide
range of uses in which the etymological value is preserved: ‘part’,
‘share’, ‘fraction’, hence ‘allotted region’, ‘territory’, or ‘share of
esteem’, ‘social class’. But тогга in poetry characteristically refers to
the personal fate of a man, his allotted share of life delimited by the
moment of death. Thus Moira is personified as goddess (after Homer,
232 Commentary: XCVI (D. 25)
goddesses) of Fate, where ‘fate’ is understood in reference to death.
Taking the words in this literary sense we get as a second reading:
*the magnitude of one's death determines the magnitude of one's
destiny or share of life’.
There are two natural interpretations of this statement, neither of
them entirely satisfactory. There may be an allusion here to the
mystic promise of something beyond the grave, a fate ‘far better for
the initiated' or purified souls than for the others, who suffer punish-
ment or ‘lie in the mire’.3!9 Such an allusion comes as a surprise, for
the Heraclitean doctrine of survival seems to point to a single destiny
of elemental psychic recurrence for all alike. The only hint so far of
possible differences in destinies beyond the grave lies in the threat
that Justice will lay hands on those who fabricate lies or testify to
them (LXXXVII, D. 28B); and the lies in question seem to relate to
the fate of the soul after death. It is not clear how this conception of
justice, with the hint there of punishment and here of reward, can
find a place within the monistic pattern of Heraclitus’ thought. This
is, perhaps, the most difficult problem for the interpretation of his
philosophy as a coherent system. I return to it in the commentary on
CIX.
There is a second, less mysterious interpretation, which poses
similar problems for Heraclitus’ monism but which does explain how
one's destiny can be determined by one's death or moros. This view,
which interprets the greater destinies by reference to the traditional
Greek glorification of an heroic death in battle, has been accepted by
Diels and many other commentators, since it appears to be con-
firmed by Heraclitus’ own remarks about the pursuit of glory (in
XCVII, D. 29) and the honor bestowed on those who die in battle
(in C, D. 24). The glory won by risking one's life in single combat is
the theme of the Шаа; and Tyrtaeus speaks in similar terms of the
warrior who defends his city in the hoplite phalanx. Great is the share
of honor for him who dies fighting in the forefront: he is lamented
‘by young men and old alike; the whole city mourns him with terrible
grief. His tomb and his children are pointed out among men, and his
children's children and his race thereafter. Never will his noble fame
(kleos) perish, nor his name, but even when he lies under the earth he
becomes immortal (athanatos), he whom furious Ares destroys as he
excells in bravery, standing firm in combat, fighting for the sake of
his land and his children’ (Tyrtaeus, fr. 9. 23—34; cf. frs. 6—7).
Now Heraclitus is not one to follow the poets or to take the mob
as his master. But he has chosen his terms in such a way as to suggest
Commentary: XCVII-XCVIII (D. 29, 20) 233
this traditional glorification of the hero's death.5!! The classical
exaltation of military death, echoed in Horace's ode pro patria mort,
is part of the fundamental ideology of civic solidarity on which the
city-state depended for its very existence. And Heraclitus has
expressed his own endorsement of such a view in other texts, as when
he speaks of ‘holding fast to what is shared by all’ (XXX, D. 114) and
‘fighting for the law as for the city wall’ (LXV, D. 44).
Both mystic and military interpretations are surely relevant, but
neither can render the full content of this tantalizing sentence. The
initial appearance of tautology, reinforced by the extraordinary for-
mal symmetry, strongly suggests that the greater rewards are some-
how immanent in the quality of the death as such.
XCVII-XCVIII
XCVII (D. 29) The best choose one thing in exchange for all, everflowing fame
among mortals; but most men have sated themselves like cattle.
XCVIII (D. 20) Once born they want to live and have their portions (moroi);
and they leave children behind born to become their dooms (moroi).
These two fragments belong together on thematic grounds; both deal
with the ends men choose in living. And there is a formal reason for
combining them. The understood subject of XCVIII is almost certainly
hoi polloi *most people', mentioned in the last clause of XCVII; so
that it is plausible to read the former as a direct continuation of the
latter. Taken as a continuous text, XCVII—XCVIII provide a com-
mentary on XCVI, recalled here by the word play on moros.
XCVII—XCVIII give us two opposing conceptions of life and
immortality: the choice of the noblest (ho: aristoz), like Achilles in
love with imperishable fame (kleos); in contrast to the desires and
satisfaction of ‘most men’, who are compared to cattle or beasts of
burden (kténea). The terms of heroic choice recall the cosmic value
of fire which, like gold, serves as payment for all things (XL, D. 90):
‘one thing in exchange for all’. The choice of the cattle-men is
described in terms of 'satiety' koros. (For this theme compare LXVII,
D. 111; CXX, D. 65; and CXXIII, D. 67.) If my arrangement is cor-
rect, this same choice of beast-like satisfaction is described in XCVIII
by reference to the sequence of generations. The cycle of generations
is here reinterpreted as a cycle of births (gimomena . . . genesthat)
equivalent to so many deaths (moroi: both terms repeated in each
clause of XCVIII).3!2
234 Commentary: XCVII—XCVIII (D. 29, 20)
Achilles is the paradigmatic hero precisely because, when con-
fronted with a clear choice between long life (az6n) or undying fame
(kleos) to be paid for by an early death, he unhesitatingly pursues the
course of honor and death in combat.3!3 Heraclitus has generalized
this choice as an option between two forms of death and survival: a
flaming ardor for *one thing in exchange for all', or the animal satis-
factions of a portion of life continued across the generations by pro-
creation. The latter course is not only common to cattle and sheep;
it is in a larger sense the pattern of death and immortality for all
things, in the river of everflowing change and recurrence. The former,
distinctively human choice is exemplified by (but scarcely limited to)
the continuous stream of glory which flows from a heroic death in
battle.
The stylistic detail of XCVII-XCVIII merits attention. We have seen
how ‘one thing in exchange for all’ in XCVII establishes a formal
parallel between the aim of a noble life and the omnivalent principle
of fire. The phrase which follows immediately, ‘everflowing fame
among (literally, of) mortals', is marked by a curious syntactic
ambiguity and a famous literary parallel. In his encomium on the
glorious dead of Thermopylae, Simonides spoke of *the tomb which
is an altar . . . a funeral offering which all-conquering time will not
efface', and of Leonidas *who left behind a great adornment of excel-
lence (aretás kosmon) and everflowing fame (aenaon te kleos)’.314
Leonidas and his men would furnish a splendid example of what
Heraclitus meant by the choice of ‘the best’ or ‘the noblest ones’ (hoz
aristot).
The syntactic ambiguity (pointed out by Bollack-Wismann) lies in
the construction of the phrase ‘everflowing fame of mortals’ with the
preceding clause. The natural reading is to take this phrase as spelling
out the ‘one thing’ which the best will choose ‘in exchange for all’.
But that construction (which must be included in the total meaning
of XCVII) makes the genitive thnéton ‘of mortals’ curiously superflu-
ous, not to say clumsy. The use of the genitive seems to be motivated
by its formal parallel with the preceding pantén ‘(in place) of all
things’. That parallel suggests that ‘the best’ are related to ‘mortals’
as ‘the one’ (or glory, or fire) is related to ‘all things’, so that these
noblest ones become themselves ‘the ever renewed glory’ which is
produced from, and worth the price of, the totality of ‘mortal beings’.
Thus taking ‘everflowing fame’ in apposition with the subject (hoz
aristoz) rather than with the object of choice, we see these heroes as
eternally rejuvenated from among the dying (‘out of the mortals’,
Commentary: XCIX (D. 103) 235
with the partitive construction), since it is precisely by such deaths
that mortals become immortal — at least in the traditional sense illus-
trated in Tyrtaeus and Simonides, and perhaps in another sense yet
to be specified.
The composition of XCVII contains a ring effect, suggesting a
cycle of recurrence, produced by the repetition of the same verb as
first and last word in the sentence: genomeno: . . . genesthat. This
repetition is my excuse for rendering the verb twice, first ‘born (as
children)’ and then ‘become (dooms)’. The double occurrence of
moroi also highlights the multivocity of this term, which was implicit
in XCVI. In its first occurrence here ‘to have (one’s) moros’ seems to
mean ‘to get one’s share of life’, to obtain one’s place in the sun. But
from XCVI and the literary use of moros elsewhere, we know that
these portions of life are really ‘dooms’ or ‘deaths’. In their animal
pursuit of satiety (koros), by trying to get their share of life most
men gain their share of death. Instead of leaving behind like Leonidas
‘an adornment of excellence and everlasting fame’, they leave behind
children who will contest their power and control their property,
first occupying their portions of life and then following them into
the grave.315
XCIX
XCIX (D. 103) Porphyry: [According to Heraclitus, the beginning and the end
(peras) are shared in the circumference of a circle.]
This is one of those remarks which, like CIII (D. 60: ‘the way up and
down is one and the same’) might be equally appropriate in other
Heraclitean contexts: to mark the diurnal recurrence of the sun (from
darkness to darkness), the cycle of the year, the cosmic seasons, the
transformations of elements into one another, and so on. I connect it
here with the cycle of generations seen as a cycle of mortality, in
order to mark the pattern of ring composition (genomeno: . . .
genesthai) in XCVIII, and hence to characterize the cyclical form of
immortality-through-dying defined in XCVI—XCVIII. (On my arrange-
ment, Heraclitus reverts to the nobler form of immortality in C, thus
returning by a larger ring structure to the thesis posed in XCVI and
the first sentence of XCVII.) In this symmetrical pattern of periodic
recurrence the immortality of mankind does not differ in principle
from that of beasts or even elements, as we have seen, since they too
‘have their shares (moroz)’ in the universal life of nature.
236 | Commentary: C (D. 24)
This generational cycle, in which like is regularly replaced by like,
offers a mundane equivalent to that ‘terrible, grievous wheel’ of re-
birth from which the mystic initiate hoped to еѕсаре.316 For Herac-
litus there is no escape. But there must be some alternative destiny
represented by the choice of glory in XCVII (D. 29). Our understand-
ing of his psychology and eschatology will not be complete until we
can make sense of this nobler destiny within the context of Herac-
litus’ monism.
There are two linguistic features of Porphyry’s citation in XCIX
which suggest literal authenticity, and which might offer a preliminary
clue for the solution of our problem. One is the term peras for the
end point or limit of the circle.3!7 The only other occurrence of this
word in the fragments is in the statement on the /ogos of the soul, so
deep that we cannot find its limits (peirata) even if we travel over
every path (XXXV, D. 45). So the endless cycle of XCIX may allude
to another endlessness of the psyche, based on its own logos which
need not be cyclical in the same sense. The second hint of verbal
accuracy in XCIX is the old Ionic form xynos for ‘shared’, ‘common’.
The use of this thematic term should be a hint that the circle in ques-
tion is precisely the common pattern of cosmic order. But the con-
cept of ‘what is common’ has two dimensions: objectively, it is the
universal structure of unity, symmetry and recurrence; subjectively,
it is the apprehension of this structure. Thus ‘thinking is shared
(xynos) by all’ (XXXI, D. 113), and men of understanding (noos)
‘hold fast to what is shared by all’, in their thought as in their speech
and action (XXX, D. 114). If the soul has its own mode of endlessness,
that must consist precisely in the firm grasp of cosmic order by which
the few with understanding are distinguished from the many, who
exemplify but do not comprehend the universal pattern.
C
C(D.24) Gods and men honor those who fall in battle (aréiphatoi, ‘those who
are slain by Ares’).
One commentary on C has already been provided by Tyrtaeus’ des-
cription of the extraordinary honors that men heap upon the grave
and memory of him ‘whom Ares has destroyed’ (above, p. 232).
What C adds to this traditional thought is honor from the gods as
well. If we translate this according to the ‘transpositions’ of XCII and
XCIII, we can say: honor among the dead as well as among the living,
honors in the larger fate of the psyche and not only at the grave and
in the memory of men.
Commentary: CI (D. 115) and CII (D. 36) 237
The parallel between gods and men recalls LXXXIII (D. 53), where
war, as king of all, appoints ‘some as gods, others as men’. It seems
likely that the exceptional status of those who die sur le champ
d'honneur is somehow connected with the fact that the god Ares who
destroys them can himself be identified with King Polemos, the uni-
versal power of conflict and opposition.
This link to LXXXIII makes of C more than a banal restatement of
traditional Greek respect for those who die in battle. But it does not
yet explain how the special honors given by the gods are to be inte-
grated within a general theory of the psyche and its destiny.318
CI
CI(D.115) To the soul (psyché) belongs a report (logos) that increases itself.
This statement would be of great interest for the theory of the psyche
if we could be sure that it comes from Heraclitus. Unfortunately, the
language is not distinctive enough to guarantee authenticity ; and the
textual attestation is weak.3!9 There is a suspicious resemblance to
the definition of psyché which Aristotle cites (and refutes) as ‘the
number which moves itself’.329 However, since there is a reference to
the logos of soul in XXXV (D. 45), and since the notion that the
psyché grows or feeds itself with the body is attested in Hippocratic
writings,?2! it is just possible that CI is after all a quotation from
Heraclitus.
With all due caution, then, I conjecture (1) that the self-augmenting
power of the psyche is part of what is meant by the ‘deep logos’ of
the soul in XXXV (D. 45), and (2) that this power of self-expansion
is manifested in the exhalation or ‘boiling up’ of heated vapor. (See
CXIII below, and commentary on CII.) Heraclitus would thus conceive
the psyche as Homer conceived wrath, *which increases like smoke
within the breasts of men’ (Шаа XVIII.110). This expanding logos of
the soul would be something quite different from the logos or
measure of the sea, which remains constant despite its transformations
(XXXIX, D. 31B).
CII
СП (D. 36) For souls (psychai) it is death to become (be born as) water, for
water it is death to become earth; out of earth water arises (is born), out of
water soul (psyché).
238 | Commentary: CII (D. 36)
In another example of ring composition CII ends where it began, with
the word psyché. The shift from the plural (psycha:) to the singular
prevents the repetition from being too mechanical; but this shift is
probably motivated by a difference in connotation. The plural form
at the beginning suggests the soul or life-breath of individual men,
which, in popular belief, abandons the body at death and passes as a
phantom to the world below. But the singular form points to psyche
as a constituent of the natural order, like earth or water. (Compare
the generic singular in XXXV, D. 45.) Heraclitus thus replaces the
Homeric picture of the descent of human psychai into the under-
world with his own account of the elemental ‘way down’ to water
and earth, after which the same stages are repeated in reverse order as
a ‘way up’. As we have seen, the language of birth and death seems to
allude here to a mystical cycle of rebirth, as in the Pythagorean doc-
trine.
Only the transition downward to water and earth is described as
death (as well as birth); the return upwards is described only as birth
or becoming.3?2 Given the careful symmetry of this and similar frag-
ments, the strong asymmetry here is scarcely accidental. Insofar as
the ways up and down are ‘one and the same’ (CIII, D. 60), every
birth can also be described as a death. But there is another sense in
which the way down is more truly the path of mortality, the quench-
ing of fire, whereas the way up is in this same sense the path of life
and rekindling. We thus have a foothold, within Heraclitean psycho-
physics, for the dualism required by a distinguished destiny for noble
deaths.
There is an obvious parallel between the sequence of stages here
and the passage from sea to earth and back again described in
XXXVIII and XXXIX (D. 31A and B). What is new (besides the sub-
stitution of *water' for *sea") is the description of these transitions in
terms of death and birth, and the presence of psyché at beginning
and end of the series. These two points are connected. For Heraclitus
everything is a form of life, and there can be no fundamental dis-
continuity between the realm of the psyche and the realm of elemental
transformation. CII makes this clear by integrating the psyche within
a series of physical transformations.
What physical form does Heraclitus associate with the soul? CII
says only that psyche passes into, and reappears out of, water. From
this it has been generally inferred, on the strength of the parallel with
XXXVIII-XXXIX, that the psyche must be identified with the
principle of fire whose ‘reversals’ are described in those fragments.
Commentary: CII (D. 36) 239
The inference is surely a curious one, given the evidence before us.
For fire vanishes into smoke and ashes, but not into water. And if
fire can burst forth from many things, water is not one of them. What
we expect to find emerging from and returning to watery form is
some type of vapor, steam, cloud, or air, the product of water by
evaporation and the source of rain or moisture by condensation. That
this is what Heraclitus has in mind here is confirmed by the other
texts that speak of psyche as alternatively ‘moist’ (CVI, D. 117; CVIII,
D. 77) and ‘dry’ (CIX, D. 118). For of course air, wind and vapor may
in fact be either dry or humid; whereas this contrast makes no sense
if applied to fire or flame. Hence psyche changes to water by pre-
cipitation or condensing, just as water changes to earth by further
condensation. The relevant parallel is to the series of elemental trans-
formations ascribed to Anaximenes and attested for Anaxagoras:
psyché here occupies the place of aér, wind and cloud in the standard
ѕедиепсе,323 By his substitution of ‘soul’ for ‘air’, Heraclitus has re-
shaped the element physics of Milesian cosmology as a doctrine
focussed on the human principle of life and mortality.
As proxy for the elemental power of the atmosphere, psyche in
CII corresponds somehow to the préstér or lightning storm of XXXVIII
(D. 31A), which emerges from sea in what appears to be an upward
path of elemental change. This suggests not that psyche and préstér
are physically identical but that there must be some analogy between
the human soul and the flash of lightning in the sky. The force of this
analogy will be brought out in CIX (D. 118).
As was noted, most modern commentators have interpreted the
parallel between СП and ХХХУШ-ХХХІХ as showing that Herac-
litus identified the soul with elemental fire. This mistake follows
directly from the assumption that in both cases Heraclitus is expound-
ing a theory of three (and only three) elemental forms. But this
assumption, for which there is no ancient authority, is without any
basis in the texts except precisely as a misreading of XXXVIII and CII,
taking them both as the expression of a complete theory of elemental
transformation. The misreading, which goes back as far as Zeller, is
itself the result of an erroneous conception of Heraclitus as a prosaic
cosmologist or pAysikos.??* Zeller took over this misconception from
Aristotle and Theophrastus; but neither one committed the modern
mistake of identifying psyche as fire in Heraclitus. Aristotle described
the soul as a vaporous ‘exhalation’ (anathymiasis), which means some-
thing like smoke of steam or mist (CXIIIA below). The Theophras-
tean doxography in Diogenes is silent on this point; but in the remote
240 Commentary: CIII (D. 60)
echoes of this doxography in Aetius and Philo the soul is defined
respectively as anathymiasis and pneuma (breath, wind’).325 So the
Stoics attributed to Heraclitus the view that 'souls steam up (are
exhaled, anathymioóntai) from moisture’ (CXIIIB). The respectable
ancient evidence is thus unanimous in confirming the natural inter-
pretation of CII, with the psyche understood as a kind of atmospheric
vapor emerging from water.
It is in fact the prevalent view in early thought, in Greece as else-
where, that the ‘soul’ or spirit of a man is a kind of vital breath,
inhaled from birth (or from the moment of creation, in the case of
Adam) and ‘expired’ at death. Thus an interlocutor of Socrates
reports that most men will suppose that, when the psyche leaves the
body at death, “it is scattered like wind (pneuma) or smoke’ (Phaedo
70A). It was just this commonplace view of the soul as an atmos-
pheric substance like breath that was developed in quasi-scientific
form in the school of Ionian natural philosophy from Anaximenes to
Diogenes of Apollonia.526
The cyclical movement of CII parallels the movement between
light and darkness, waking and sleeping in XC (D. 26), as well as the
cycle of generations in XCV (D. A19) and XCVII—XCVIII (D. 29
and 20); it contains no hint of any higher psychic path such as will
be suggested in CIX—CXII.
CIII
CIII (D. 60) The way up and down is one and the same.
СШ calls out for some context which it does not provide. I have
placed it here as a comment on the cyclical destiny of the psyche
which is at the same time a passage through higher and lower elemen-
tal forms.32? Both psychological and elemental interpretations of
СШ are well entrenched in the ancient commentary.??8 And there is
no need to choose between them, since elements and psyche are so
many different phases or aspects of a single reality, the kindling and
quenching of cosmic fire.
There is a still simpler, more literal interpretation (proposed by
Calogero and developed by Kirk, p. 112) which takes the statement
to mean only that every uphill path can equally well be described as
downhill, depending upon where one is standing; just as it is one and
the same road that runs from Philadelphia to New York and from
Commentary: CIV (D. 43) and CV (D. 85) 241
New York to Philadelphia. This literal reading of СШ is presupposed
by both the psychological and elemental interpretations.
CIV
CIV (D. 43) One must quench violence (hybris) quicker than a blazing fire.
CIV is the only fragment where fire is presented in negative terms, as
a purely destructive Ѓогсе.329 This may simply reflect the fact that
Heraclitus is exploiting the familiar literary conceit *to quench
hybris'.359 But perhaps there is more at stake.
In form this fragment recalls two others: LXXXVIII (D. 96)
‘Corpses are more to be thrown out than dung’, and XXX (D. 114)
*One must hold fast to what is shared by all, as a city holds to its law,
and even more firmly.’ This common comparative pattern suggests
that, beyond the traditional warning against hybris, CIV is designed
to express a more distinctly Heraclitean thought. As an enemy attack
on the city wall threatens all the inhabitants of the city, so a house
on fire threatens the whole neighborhood with destruction. And just
as the defense of the civic law is seen (in LXV, D. 44) to be as vital as
the defense of the wall, so here the suppression of hybris — the sup-
pression of that violence which disregards the law and endangers the
community — is seen to be more urgent than the quenching of a fire
raging out of control. In alluding to the dangerous power of fire,
Heraclitus thus implicitly qualifies his praise for the principle of war
and conflict when it appears as wanton violence. Like strife, fire
itself can become purely destructive if it threatens civic unity and the
common interests of all (to xynon panton in XXX).
The formal parallel to the aphorism on corpses suggests that there
may also be some hidden connection between the fire of hybris and
the destiny of the soul. This hint will be pursued in the commentary
on CV.
CV
СУ (D. 85) Itis hard to fight against passion (thymos); for whatever it wants
it buys at the expense of soul (psyché).
As Reinhardt remarked, CV seems to presuppose a customary phrase
about ‘buying something with the psyché’ where the meaning is ‘рау-
242 Commentary: CV (D. 85)
ing for it with one’s life’, as in the purchase of freedom or glory.33!
But this sense of the phrase leads to paradox. For to pay with one's
life for something noble (as in the decision of Achilles to avenge
Patroclus) is an action we expect Heraclitus to approve of. Why should
one struggle against thymos if the consequences of yielding to it are
so noble? And how can this threat to one's life explain why resistance
is so difficult?
The beginning of an answer might be found if Heraclitus is alluding
precisely to the anger (thymos) of Achilles, which was paid for by
the death of Patroclus. (See the reference to Achilles’ refusal to
‘quench his wrath’ at Шаа 1X.678.) But this line of thought is ruled
out by most commentators, who take thymos not as ‘anger’ but as
‘desire’ or ‘appetite’ generally, what Plato and Aristotle call epithymia.
On this view, the loss of psyche is a result of sensual indulgence, as in
drink: ‘the gratification of desire implies the exchange of dry soul-
fire for moisture’, said Burnet, referring for support to CVI (D. 117),
СУШ (D. 77), and CIX (D. 118).332
This modern view must be mistaken, however, for it flies in the
face of the classical understanding of thymos as ‘manly spirit’ or
‘anger’, to be sharply distinguished from sensual appetite (epithymia),
as in the tripartite psychology of Plato’s Republic. When Aristotle
and Plutarch cite CV they always take thymos in this sense, just as
Plato does in the two passages where he apparently echoes our text.333
We could believe that the ancients misunderstood Heraclitus here only
if we had some reason to suppose that the sense of thymos in his
Ionic dialect differed substantially from the Attic usage familiar to
Plato and later writers. But the opposite is the case, as we can see
from Herodotus. Although he does show some trace of the older,
wider use of the word in Homer (where thymos could mean ‘heart’ or
‘spirit’ in general, the organ of mind and intelligence as well as desire),
in most instances Herodotus’ use of thymos corresponds closely to
that of Plato.334
I conclude that our ancient sources understood Heraclitus perfectly
when they took thymos to mean ‘anger’. The picture of aggressive
rage as a difficult adversary to fight against is vivid and striking; and
hence the success of Heraclitus’ phrase. The imagery of combat would
be much less apposite if we took thymos as sensual desire.
This leaves us with the question how yielding to anger is to be con-
nected with loss of psyche. And (beyond a possible allusion to the
death of Patroclus) the answer must depend upon the Heraclitean
view of psyche as a kind of breath or vapor. (See above on CII, D.
Commentary: CV (D. 85) 243
36.) Anger and psyche are thus related by the fact that both can be
understood in terms of anathymiasis, the boiling up of some sort of
steaming vapor.?35 Anger is so difficult to resist precisely because its
expression, the passionate act of self-affirmation in righteous rage or
indignation, resembles so closely the principle of vitality as such, the
fiery affirmation of one's own life. But just as fire and strife must be
quenched when they threaten the common good (CIV, D. 43), so the
spirit of anger can lead to crime and destruction if allowed to rage
unchecked. As Democritus said (in what is a continuation rather than
a negation of Heraclitus’ thought), ‘although it is hard to fight against
anger (thymos), it is the task of a man to prevail over it, if he has
good sense’ (fr. 236).
The tendency of anger to lead to acts of hybris or wanton violence
explains how it works its will ‘at the expense of psyché’, by damage
to the agent's own vital interests and to the life of others in an out-
burst of destructive rage. But Heraclitus! thought should probably
also be spelled out in psychophysical terms: we must prevent the fire
of wrath and hybris from consuming our own life-breath. Yielding to
irrational anger may thus be seen as a kind of suicide by self-
conflagration. This would imply that there is another ‘death’ for the
psyche, distinct from but comparable to the dissolution into water:
an excess of unthinking ardor that wastes the psyche in vain, instead
of risking it deliberately in a noble cause.
It may be raised as an objection to this view that it spoils the neat
one-to-one correlation between different stages on the elemental way
up and down and some linear scale of nobler and baser destinies for
the soul: it now turns out that not every passage of the psyche into
a more fiery condition will be a ‘greater share’, a fate which a wise
hero might choose. On this reading of CV, fire can be a force of
irrational destruction in the soul as well as in the city. But what the
psychophysical theory loses in simplicity it gains in subtlety and
realism. For a man of spirit, anger is indeed a greater temptation than
drink or sensuality, just because its ardor resembles that of courage
and nobility of soul. Thus the wrathful man will see his own motiv-
ation in terms of honor or justice even when pursuing a course of
blind destruction.
I note, by way of anticipation, that there need be no contradiction
between this conception of anger as irrational ardor of the psyche
and CIX (D. 118); for the latter distinguishes the wisest and best soul
by its dryness and clarity, not by its heat.
244 Commentary: CVI (D. 117) and CVII (D. 95)
CVI
CVI (D. 117) A man when drunk is led by a beardless boy, stumbling, not per-
ceiving where he is going, having his soul (Psyche) moist.
CVI may almost do without a commentary: the reader scarcely needs
reminding that the joke about the man who has drenched his soul
with drink is also to be taken literally, as a reference to psychic dis-
solution or partial ‘death’ into the watery element (CII, D. 36). I note
only the resonance here with the language of other fragments. The
man led by a beardless (anébos) boy recalls the Ephesians of LXIV
(D. 121), who should be ‘hanged to a man (hébédon) and leave their
city to the boys (anéboz)’: those citizens stumble like drunken men,
and a drunkard is worse than a child. So likewise the verb ераібп
(not) perceiving (where he goes’) echoes by inversion the definition
of temperance or ‘sound thinking’, sóphronein in XXXII (D. 112):
‘to act and speak . . . perceiving (epaiontes) things according to their
nature’. As Bollack-Wismann point out, the participial constructions
develop a kind of causal analysis in three stages: the man has lost con-
trol of his body, because he has lost his perception, because the
lucidity of his psyche has been weakened by fluids.336
CVII
CVII (р. 95) Plutarch: [As Heraclitus says, it is better to hide one’s folly
(amathié), but that is difficult in one’s cups and at ease.]
Bywater and Burnet accepted the reference to drinking as Heraclitean;
if so, CVII would be appropriate here after CVI. But if (as most
editors have supposed) the mention of wine is due solely to Plutarch’s
own adaptation of the saying, it will be difficult to give any definite
point or context to CVII, which then reduces to a three-word saying
of proverbial form: ‘[it is] better to hide [one’s] folly’. It is true that
the term for ‘folly’, amathié, echoes by negation the kind of ‘learning
from experience’ (mathésis) that most men lack (IV, D. 17) and for
which Heraclitus has a high regard (XIV, D. 55). The notion of ‘hiding’
also recurs in X (D. 123), where physis or the nature of things is said
to love to hide itself, and in LXXXVI (D. 86), where incredibility or
incredulity (apistié) escapes being recognized. But I do not see how
such verbal resonance sheds any light on CVII.
Commentary: CVIII (D. 77) and CIX (D. 118) 245
CVIII
СУШ (р. 77) Porphyry: [Hence Heraclitus said it was delight, not death, for
souls to become moist.]
Porphyry is following an allegory of Numenius, a neo-Pythagorean
philosopher of the second century A.D. Although this passage is often
cited as a ‘fragment’ of Numenius, it is in fact a paraphrase by Por-
phyry which may have only the most tenuous connection with Herac-
litus’ own words. Hence some commentators would disregard СУШ
entirely, as an unreliable echo of other fragments.337 However,
Numenius’ version of XCII (D. 62), preserved by Porphyry in the
very next sentence, does retain some of Heraclitus’ original word-
ing.338 So it is also possible that the old poetic word terpsis ‘delight’,
which occurs once in Herodotus, may represent Heraclitus! own
description for the experience of the soul's becoming moist. (The
fact that Numenius offers an allegorical exegesis of terpsis, as ‘the fall
of the souls into generation’, suggests that the word itself is part of
the text he is commenting on.) This fits well with, but does not sub-
stantially add to, the idea of the soul moistening itself with drink
attested in CVI (D. 117).339
CIX
CIX (D.118) A gleam of light is the dry soul, wisest and best.
The transformations and deformations of CIX make one of the
stranger stories in the twisted course of Heraclitean scholarship.
Before discussing its meaning we must deal with an old problem con-
cerning the text.
It is as certain as anything of this sort can be that the first three
words of Heraclitus’ sentence were augé xéré psyché ‘gleam of light,
dry, soul’, with the adjective ‘dry’ placed ambiguously between the
two nouns. That is the form in which the quotation is found in no
less than six of our ancient authorities: Musonius, Stobaeus, Philo,
Plutarch, Galen and Hermias.34° The accuracy of this version is con-
firmed by the fact that only this ambiguous position for the adjective
can explain the existence of three ancient variants: (1) one in which
the ambiguity is avoided by placing the adjective after psyché so that
it must be construed ‘dry soul’ and not ‘dry beam of light’;34! (2)
one in which the wording is altered in the opposite sense, so that the
246 | Commentary: CIX (D. 118)
only possible reading is ‘dry beam of light’;342 and finally (3) a late
and shortened version reflecting the construal in (1), but where all
mention of augé ‘gleam’ has been omitted, and we are left with the
phrase ‘dry soul’ as subject of the sentence.343
The Renaissance editor Stephanus (Henri Estienne), followed by
Bywater and by many editors since, thought that the chief variants
could be explained by positing the comparatively rare word aué
(psyché) ‘dry (soul)’ as the Heraclitean original, and then taking augé
‘gleam’ as a corruption for this unfamiliar form. But the form aué is
simply unattested in the ancient and medieval tradition of CIX, down
to the fourteenth century, whereas augé is given in eleven ancient
works by nine different authors, including three of our best sources
for Heraclitus’ text: Plutarch, Clement, and Stobaeus.344 There is no
sound paleographical basis for altering the text. An emendation
would be justified only if the text as transmitted did not make good
sense. But, as we shall see, it makes excellent sense.345
The textual question resolved, we are faced with the syntactical
ambiguity from which the variants arose. Since CIX consists of two
feminine nouns (augé and psyché) and three feminine adjectives
(‘dry’, ‘wisest’, and ‘best’), and the last two adjectives can be con-
strued only with psyché, it is natural to try taking the first adjective
with augé. This gives us the equation ‘a dry beam of light, the wisest
and best soul’. This construction is attested in two ancient sources,
and it accounts for Ficino’s Latin version lux sicca, anima sapientis-
sima. But the difficulty is that if ‘a dry light’ might make some sense
in Latin or English, a dry augé seems to make very little sense. For
augé is normally used for the rays of the sun, the flash of lightning,
the glare of fire, the sheen of gold or brass, even for the rays or
brilliance of the eyes; it is regularly a visual! phenomenon in which
dryness or moisture seems to play no part.
Hence Plutarch and Clement, the two ancient authors best
acquainted with Heraclitus’ riddling style, both realized that the full
meaning of CIX required taking ‘dry’ with ‘soul’, as counterpart to
‘moist soul’ in CVI (D. 117); and both adjusted their quotations to
make this clear.346
It would be agreeable to my general scheme of interpretation to
find some significance in this syntactical ambiguity, and to offer a
reading of CIX according to both constructions. And at least one
ancient author, Porphyry, thought he could make sense of the phrase
‘dry аисё”.347 But in this case I do not see that the ambiguity enriches
our understanding of CIX enough to be worth attending to. Hence I
Commentary: CIX (D. 118) 247
consider only the reading that construes xéré ‘dry’ as attributive with
‘soul’ (as in the best ancient tradition) and takes auge ‘gleam’ as the
predicate. We thus have two statements with a single subject: (1) dry
psyché is a beam of light, and (2) dry psyché is wisest and best.348
This gives a new dimension to Heraclitus’ doctrine of the soul: just
as moisture weakens the soul so that it may perish into water, so dry-
ness strengthens and improves it to the point where it may be puri-
fied as light (not fire). Looking back to XC (D. 26), we see that the
conception of the psyche in terms of light was probably anticipated
in the riddle about the man who lights a lamp (phaos, light) for him-
self in the night. But the lamp there was a nocturnal substitute for
the truer life of the psyche in the light of day; and it is of course day-
light that is suggested by the term augé in CIX. Now augé can refer
to any gleam or radiance, including the flare of fire or the glistening
of bright metal. But the poetic associations of the word connect it
with the light of the sun as a figure for life itself, as in the Homeric
phrase ‘to see the rays (auga:) of the sun’, meaning ‘to be alive’ (JI.
XVI.188; cf. Л. 1.88, Od. ХІ.498, etc.). The radiance of the sunlit sky
thus stands traditionally for life; it is the innovation of Heraclitus to
identify this physically with the finest state of the psyche.
This conception is deeply rooted both in the language of early
Greek poetry and in the theories of pre-Socratic philosophy. In poetic
terms CIX defines the best condition of the psyche as a kind of aither,
not fire as such but the clear and luminous upper sky, as contrasted
with the murky and moist lower aer, comprising haze, mist, and
cloud.349 This atmospheric contrast between translucent and opaque,
dry and damp, is preserved in the Ionian cosmology of Diogenes and
directly applied to the psyche: our soul and that of animals, the prin-
ciple ‘by which they all live and see and hear, and have the rest of
their perception or intelligence (noésis)', is composed of air, but a
form of air that is ‘hotter than the air outside in which we live, but
much colder than that by the sun' (Diogenes, fr. 5). According to
Theophrastus, Diogenes held that a man ‘thinks well (phronein) with
air that is pure and dry; for the juice or moisture (zkmas) disturbs his
intelligence (nous); hence in sleep and drunkenness and when one is
full of food, one thinks less well. And there is a sign that moisture
removes intelligence in the fact that the other animals are not as
smart; for they breathe the air from the earth and eat wetter food.’35°
Now the doctrine of Diogenes belongs to a later period in the fifth
century, and it might have been influenced by Heraclitus’ remarks
about moisture in the soul. More probably, however, it represents a
248 Commentary: CIX (D. 118)
direct development from the old Milesian school tradition: from the
doctrine of Anaximenes that constituted Heraclitus’ own point of
departure. If so, the moist-dry contrast in Heraclitus! psychophysics
is not original; he takes it for granted as the theory current in
*scientific' circles of his own time and place. What is distinctly
Heraclitean is the enrichment of this physical doctrine with figurative
and poetic overtones: the drunkard with a wet soul, and the dry soul
as lucid as sunshine. These images serve not merely as an ornament of
style but as the symbolic expression for a rigorous correlation be-
tween physical and moral-intellectual states of the psyche. As we pro-
ceed downwards, we have in elemental terms the physical death of
psyche into water (CII, D. 36), in psychological terms the visual
*quenching' of a man in darkness followed by the quenching of his
consciousness in sleep (XC, D. 26), in psychophysical terms the
moistening of the soul in drunkenness (CVI, D. 117) and perhaps in
sensual pleasure generally (CVIII, D. 77), corresponding to the cattle-
death of men who seek satiety and procreation (XCVII—XCVIII, D.
29 and 20). In all probability, the discharge of semen in intercourse
was conceived as the waste of life-spirit into liquid form. By contrast,
the rational clarity of the best men who choose ‘one thing in
exchange for all’ represents the polar opposite to this dissolution into
water and darkness: the dry state of the soul, which is (or is like) a
beam of light.
Before summing up the implications of this doctrine for Heraclitus'
ideas on death and immortality, it will be useful to clarify my inter-
pretation by a contrast with the common view that the psyche for
Heraclitus is a form of fire. This view goes back to Zeller and Burnet,
but it is best stated by Kirk in an article on Heraclitus’ conception of
death. Kirk is attempting to show how there can be alternative des-
tinies for the soul after death, and in particular how it can be advan-
tageous to die in battle (cf. C, D. 24). Although ‘it is death to souls
to become water’ (CII, D. 36),
not all souls suffer this ‘death’ on the death of the body. Some
retain their fiery character and rejoin the mass of pure fire in the
world; and since dryness, i.e. greater fieriness, was in life held to
be the condition of wisdom and excellence, it follows that those
souls which remain fiery and do not undergo the death of be-
coming water are the souls of the virtuous, and that the association
with pure fire is the after-life which Heraclitus seems to promise
[in XCVI, D. 25; CX, D. 63; CXI, D. 98; taken together with
LXXXIV, D. 27 and XCII, D. 62] ...
Commentary: CIX (D. 118) 249
If, then, when the body dies the soul either becomes water or
remains fiery, and becomes more fiery still, what is the factor that
determines the issue? Clearly, the composition of the soul at the
moment of death; the soul in life contains varying proportions of
fire and moisture, according as it is wise or foolish, percipient or
unpercipient; if the amount of water at the moment of death
exceeds the amount of fire, presumably the soul as a whole suffers
the ‘death’ of turning to water: but if the soul is predominantly
‘dry’, then it escapes the ‘death’ of becoming water and joins the
world-mass of fire.351
On this basis Kirk can explain the advantages of death in battle,
which lie in the suddenness rather than in the violence of the end, ‘so
that the soul at the moment of death is in its normal [i.e. healthy,
robust] condition, and has not been debilitated and moistened by
the experience of sickness’ (and, we may add, of old age). This will
not guarantee a fiery destiny for a soul that is depraved; ‘it only insures
that its fate should depend solely on éthos’, that is on its character.
(Cf. CXIV, D. 119.) ‘Other things being equal, however, it is better to
die in battle, especially because this is normally a noble activity
which, unless cowardice be shown, tends to increase the fire in the
soul,’352
I agree with Kirk on the need to reconstruct for Heraclitus a kind
of ‘identity theory’ of body and mind, in which stages of physical
change and states of moral psychology are not merely put in one-to-
one correspondence but are conceived as aspects of a single reality:
wisdom and excellence simply are the dry condition of the psyche.
Furthermore, we agree that this psychophysical theory must, as in
the case of Empedocles, take account of different destinies after
death for the noble and the base, the wise and the foolish. We differ,
however, in regard to the physical constitution of the psyche in a
living man, and hence in regard to the ‘greater destiny’ for a noble
soul after death.
I see no evidence in the fragments to support the view that ‘the
soul in life contains varying proportions of fire and moisture as it is
wise ог foolish'.355 The fragments do not speak of psyche as a mix-
ture but as a single entity or substance or elemental principle that
can be either dry or wet. Nothing whatsoever is said about it being
fiery. On the contrary, our interpretation of CV (D. 85) suggests that
psyche can actually be consumed by too much heat or ‘boiling’
(above, p. 243). All of this fits perfectly with a conception of
psyche as an atmospheric principle like breath or air, produced from
250 Commentary: CIX (D. 118)
water by evaporation or ‘exhalation’ (anathymiasis), tending upwards
and aspiring to the condition of the luminous sky or upper air
(aithér), but not to the condition of fire as such.
Now the distance between Kirk's view and mine can be diminished
if we think of celestial fire — the fire of the sun and the stars — simply
as atmospheric air or exhalation become dry and luminous (like the
best and wisest psyche of CIX), and hence rational and orderly in
such a way as to account for the regularity of the celestial motions.
To the periodic measures of the sun, as a visible expression of order
in nature, would correspond the physical substance of celestial light,
as the highest manifestation of cosmic fire. We recall that the doxog-
raphy ascribes to Heraclitus an account of the celestial bodies as
flames produced by a gathering of bright and pure exhalation (anathy-
miaseis) from earth and sea: the moon is in an impure region nearer
the earth, while the sun’s light and heat are more intense since ‘it lies
in a translucent (diaugés) and unmixed region’, presumably a region
of pure, dry radiance, unadulterated by mist and moisture from
below.354 If there is a kernel of truth in this report, it indicates that
the matter of the best and wisest souls must itself constitute the
effulgence of the heavenly bodies, or their celestial source and environ-
ment.
On this view, there must be some distinction between celestial fire
or light, as the highest destiny for the soul, and terrestrial flame here
below. They are both forms of fire, but the status of the fiery element
in our immediate vicinity is ambivalent, since it may (like wrath and
hybris) manifest itself in a raging, destructive conflagration. Being
burnt to death in a city on fire can no more guarantee a ‘greater fate’
for the soul than dying in a quarrel kindled by unreasoning fury. By
contrast a death in battle would be sanctified symbolically, as a death
bestowed by Ares the War-King, and also physically and morally, since
it would guarantee that the ardor of the psyche would not be wasted
in wanton violence but expended in the rational defense of the city
and its nomos, in ‘holding fast to what is shared by all’ (XXX, D.
114). Such a death will naturally be honored by men and also by
gods, that is, by the elements and powers of the cosmos. For it
guarantees the passage of the psyche upwards in a rational direction,
towards the lucid sky of ‘luminous (aithrios) Zeus’ (XLV, D. 120).
Those outstanding men who choose ‘one thing in exchange for all’
know what they are choosing. Whether philosophers or not, they
know in effect ‘what the wise is, set apart from all’ (XXVII, D. 108).
They recognize, in choosing the gleam of light that is the ‘ever-
Commentary: CIX (D. 118) 251
renewed glory of mortals', both the fire exchanged for all things and
‘the wise one alone’: the wisdom that governs the universe and the
sun that never sets (CXXII, D. 16). The task of the philosopher is
only to make explicit, to articulate in discourse (logos), the pattern
exemplified in the life and death of such men.
On this view of psyche as an atmospheric substance intermediate
between water and fire, roughly in the position of air or breath
(pneuma), it can of course be moist; but if it actually turns to water
— if it liquefies or condenses — it ‘dies’, that is, it ceases to be psyche
(CII, D. 36). And similarly, although the life-breath may be dry and
hot and suffused with light, perhaps it cannot be inflamed as celestial
fire without ‘dying’, without ceasing to be psyche as such. This is a
point on which the fragments leave us in doubt, and perhaps for good
reason. Heraclitus wants to conceive the psyche as a particular
physical form; but he also describes the cosmic fire itself as ‘ever-
living’ and implies that every form of ‘kindling’ is a form of life. What
he probably meant, therefore, but what would be difficult to say
(since psyché means ‘life’) is that the passage of psyche into celestial
fire might be both the death of psyche and at the same time its attain-
ment of the highest form of life. This is, perhaps, the ultimate para-
dox expressed in the statement that mortals and immortals live one
another’s death and are dead in one another’s life (XCII, D. 62).
We now see Heraclitus’ answer to the question about what awaits
men at their death. All men’s bodies will take the downward path of
dissolution into earth and water. The psychai of most men may fol-
low a similar course, or else remain in atmospheric form and be re-
integrated into the psycha: of other living things. But the souls of
those men who have nobly lived and nobly died will move upwards
to the form of fire constituted by celestial light. How much indivi-
duality can be assigned even to the best souls in such an afterlife is
not clear (and will depend upon an interpretation of the next three,
very difficult fragments). But it is also not clear why individual sur-
vival — a continuation of personal identity or self-awareness — should
be important for Heraclitus in the long run. Whether we speak of the
higher destiny of psyche in physical terms, as the radiant sky, or in
psychological terms as an effort of sound thinking (sd-phronein),
there seems to be no ground or motive for the conservation of the
person or psyche as such, as a particular physical and mental form.
It is true that wisdom, or the search for wisdom in sound thinking
(sophronein), begins with self-knowledge (XXIX, D. 116); and Herac-
litus went in search of himself (XXVIII, D. 101). But what he found
252 Commentary: CIX (D. 118)
within his own psyche was a logos deep enough to be co-extensive
with the universe (XXXV, D. 45). So the true recognition of one's
self is a discovery not of what is private and personal but of what is
‘shared by all’: the unity of all nature which is the deep logos, the
deepest structure of the self. And this unity is discovered in thinking,
phronein, which is ‘common to all’ (XXXI, D. 113), and common
not only because for Heraclitus all things think but because it is pre-
cisely in thought, when it is in sound condition — as in the case of
the dry soul — that one can embrace the structure of the whole uni-
verse.
In sóphronein, which is the greatest excellence and wisdom
(XXXII, D. 112), one can, by putting one's own words and deeds
into agreement with the cosmic /ogos, succeed to some degree in
knowing or mastering the intention, the rational plan (gnóme) by
which all things are governed (LIV, D. 41). For Heraclitus there can
be no higher human destiny than this, which surely requires knowl-
edge and rational perception, but need not involve anything specifi-
cally personal or individual. And the higher (as well as lower) fates
of the psyche after death may be incompatible with any awareness
of a personal self, as they seem to be incompatible with the corre-
sponding physical existence of an individual psyche, as a particular
vaporous bubbling up of breath or air.
But if everything that goes up must come down again, since there
is no transmundane realm, no escape from the cosmic cycle (even if
this cycle includes the eventual destruction and renewal of the cos-
mos as such, and particularly if it does so), one might question the
coherence of this conception of the soul's path upwards to celestial
light or fire as a ‘greater destiny’ (XCVI, D. 25). For if the soul that
dies into water and earth will eventually be reborn as soul, and so
likewise everything else will eventually be exchanged for fire and
back again (XL, D. 90), where is there any ultimate difference of
principle between the nobler and the baser fate, where in the long
run is there any advantage allotted to wiser lives or better deaths?
This is the specifically Heraclitean form of a general question that
any monistic system of ethics must face. And Heraclitus would surely
have answered like Spinoza: the beatitude which rewards a life of
excellence is the quality of that life itself; in his own words ‘man’s
character is his fate’, his daimon for good fortune or for bad. Since
we are forever dying and being reborn in body and in psyche, both
asleep and awake, the change at the moment of physical death, when
the psyche departs and the body is left behind like excrement, is less
Commentary: CIX (D. 118) 258
fundamental than it might seem. The immediate destiny of the psyche
beyond the grave will be simply an extrapolation of its condition
during the life of the person. Whether it rises to more lucid form or
dissolves into the lower elements or (perhaps) hovers as breath and
atmosphere until it is inhaled into the new lives of children or animals,
will depend upon the kind of life it has lived and the manner in which
it confronts death. In the long run it makes no difference, perhaps,
because in the long run there is no personal identity, no continuation
of the individual psyche as such. What properly concerns us is only
the course of one's own life, its share of lucidity and the soundness
of its thinking, and the prolongation of this course in the direction
taken by the psyche at death. Beyond this immediate prolongation
the individual as such cannot see, and need not look. There can be no
personal interest in what happens in the long гип.355
We have, then, a system with no place for personal immortality
through all time, in the Christian or even in the Pythagorean sense. It
might be called a meaningful conception of the afterlife with no place
for personal immortality at all. (And the same holds for Aristotle's
view of the soul, though he speaks less often of what awaits us when
we die.) ‘Salvation’ for Heraclitus is s6-phronein, to save one's think-
ing by recognizing one's own self in the structure of the whole. This
is, perhaps, to lose one's self but to find something better: the unity
of all things in the wise one.
This all-embracing unity of the living and the dead, of dying and
being reborn, being kindled and being put out, is familiar to us all in
elemental exchange, in respiration and excretion, in sleeping and
waking, in the experience of nightfall and sunrise, winter and spring.
It is this familiar pattern of experience that permits us to 'grasp the
dead while alive' (XC, D. 26), but which we do not comprehend as
such, and hence ‘do not think such things as we encounter nor recog-
nize what we experience' (IV, D. 17). This universal structure of
living-through-dying, the deep /ogos of the soul which makes it (in
one sense) co-extensive with the cosmos, is the very logos according
to which ‘all things come to pass’, that is, according to which ‘all
things are born’ (panta ginomena, 1.2). In another sense, the psyche
is only one elemental form among others, a bubble that bursts and is
forgotten in the continual steaming up of new vapors from the waters
ever flowing on in the river of the cosmos. But insofar as it is able to
grasp the identity between its own logos and that of the universe, in-
sofar as a man comes to salvage his thinking by recognizing what he
encounters in his experience, by holding fast in cognition and in
254 Commentary: CX (D. 63)
action to what is shared by all, to this extent the psyche can ‘travel
over every path' without limit (XXXV, D. 45) and can come to realize
its unity with the cosmos as a whole, in the everliving fire forever
kindled and forever put out. As Pascal put it, in almost Heraclitean
word play: ‘par l'espace, l'universe me comprend et m'engloutit
comme un point; par la pensée je le comprends’.35® It was in a similar
spirit that Spinoza described scientific knowledge and rational proof
as ‘the eyes of the mind, by which it sees and observes things’, and
by which ‘we feel and experience that we are eternal’.357 For
Heraclitus, as for Spinoza, this experience of eternity, far from being
a matter of personal survival, consists rather in the overcoming of
everything personal, partial, and particular, in the recognition and
full acceptance of what is common to all.
CX
СХ (D. 63) ...torise up (?) and become wakeful! watchers of living men and
corpses.
Hippolytus, our source for CX, sees a reference here to the resurrec-
tion of the body on Judgement Day and to the God responsible for
resurrection. The beginning of the quotation is unintelligible, and no
satisfactory restoration has been found.358 We can be sure only of
some mention of a ‘rising’ or ‘standing up’. Hippolytus' remark and
the Hesiodic parallel to be considered immediately both indicate that
this rising must concern the fate of men — at least of some men —
after death.
Any key to the meaning must lie in the comparison with Hesiod's
myth of the metals, where the golden race of men, who ‘lived like
gods’ and ‘died as if overcome by sleep’, are said after death (literally,
‘after the earth had covered them over’) to have been made ‘divinities
(spirits, dazmones) by the counsels of mighty Zeus, noble ones upon
the earth, guardians of mortal men’ (Works and Days 121—3). It is
presumably these same spirits of the golden race that Hesiod later
describes as ‘thirty thousand upon the fruitful earth, Zeus’ immortal
guardians of mortal men; who watch over judgments (dzkaz) and evil
deeds, clothed in mist (aêr), travelling everywhere over the earth’
(ibid. 252—5). That Heraclitus is deliberately alluding to this passage
is confirmed not only by the use of the term phylakes for ‘watchers’
or 'guardians' but also by the fuller expression *watchers of living men
and corpses’, an intriguing variant on Hesiod's repeated formula:
*watchers of mortal men'.
Commentary: CX (D. 63) 255
The Hesiodic passage is full of ideas and phrases that lend them-
selves to reinterpretation along Heraclitean lines. These men of the
Golden Age are mortals who become immortal (athanato:, verse 253),
whose death is like a sleep (verse 116) but who are ‘reawakened’ as
guardians. (The reference to *waking' is explicit in CX, but implicit in
Hesiod's simile.) Their chief concern is to see justice done; and the
second mention of these guardians introduces Hesiod's apotheosis of
Dike herself as daughter of Zeus (verse 256). By implication, it would
seem that for Heraclitus too these guardians must serve as ministers
of Justice for human life and death, just as the Furies do for the
movement of the sun (XLIV, D. 94).
Pursuing this clue, let us see what the analogy can tell us of Herac-
litus! view of the afterlife. Does CX refer to all men or only a chosen
few? And does it refer to their fate after death, as Hippolytus sup-
poses?
The Hesiodic parallel would clearly point to an afterlife for superior
men, since Hesiod is speaking of the golden race, the finest men of all
time, who become phylakes only after their death. Even without the
passage in Hesiod we would be safe in referring CX to the psychai of
outstanding men rather than to their bodies, in view of Heraclitus'
contempt for corpses (LXXXVIII, D. 96) and the fact that the body
will not naturally ‘rise’ but must pursue its elemental return into
earth. (Note that if the mention of aér in Hesiod's passage is relevant
at all, it confirms my account of the soul as an atmospheric principle.)
CX seems, then, to refer to 'greater destinies' allotted to the psyche in
exceptional cases. This destiny is a state of wakefulness that lies
somehow above the earth (this is indicated by ‘rising’ as well as by
the Hesiodic parallel). Finally, this wakeful watching enforces justice
on ‘living ones and corpses’. This striking phrase seems to be chosen
not only for its grim realism but also for its ambiguity. It may mean
‘the living and the dead’ (as most translators render it); but it may
also mean (if we remember that for Heraclitus corpses are worse than
dung) ‘living things and inert beings like dumb earth’. This broader
reading would suggest that the watching in question extends to ele-
mental as well as human affairs, thus reinforcing the cosmic surveil-
lance carried out by the Furies.
To go further is to speculate, but some speculation may be in order.
If these guardians are ministers of cosmic justice, we must connect
them with the judgments of Dike (in LXXXVII, D. 28B) and fire (in
CXXI, D. 66), as well as with the inescapable vigilance of the sun that
never sets (CXXII, D. 16). But these guardians must also have some
place within the natural world, and I have suggested that they be con-
256 | Commentary: CXI—CXII (D. 98, 7)
ceived as privileged psycha:, in or above the atmosphere. More exactly,
they should correspond to the wisest and best souls, dry and clear as
a beam of light (auge). On this assumption, the souls who have died
heroic deaths or lived lives of excellence and lucidity will rise up as
guardians in the upper atmosphere, mingling with celestial light and
astral fire. They will appropriately perform the function of celestial
watchman traditionally assigned to the sun. (See below on CXXII,
D. 16.) For they will in effect be the sun, or at least the sunlight, and
perhaps the stars as well.
It is more difficult to say how the guardians of CX, provisionally
identified with the light-souls of CIX, are related to other forms of
celestial fire, for example to the préstér or lightning storm of
XXXVIII (D. 31A). The fragments are silent here. My own guess is
that the watchful role of select souls is represented by the whole
range of fiery phenomena in the sky, including the fearsome flash of
préstér and thunderbolt, as expressions of the power that ‘pilots all
things’ (CXIX, D. 64). What appearance could be more fitting for
these guardian spirits than the luminous signals which are the tra-
ditional instruments of the wrath and justice of the highest god?
CXI—CXII
CXI(D.98) Plutarch: [(After death, the purified souls that rise to the moon)
are nourished by the exhalation (anathymiasis) which reaches them, and Heraclitus
was right to say that souls (Psycha:) smell things in Hades.]
CXII (D. 7) Aristotle: [It seems to some that the smoky exhalation, which is
common to earth and air, is smell . . . That is why Heraclitus said what he did,
that if all things turned to smoke the nostrils would sort them out.]
Neither of these texts is a definite quotation; if the language of
Heraclitus is preserved at all, it may be in the phrase ‘souls smell
things in Hades' (CXI). I place the two passages together in the hope
that, obscure to the point of unintelligibility if taken separately, they
may clarify one another by juxtaposition. In its own context, each
statement implies a causal link between exhalation and the sense of
smell.359 This seems to have been a standard view in Greek theories
of smell, as Aristotle observes.360
What is unusual in CXII is the suggestion that everything might
become smoke, so that smell would be the only useful form of per-
ception. Reinhardt interpreted this as a mere conceptual possibility
or literary conceit, like the contrary-to-fact conditionals of XLVI
(D. 99) and CXVI (D. 15) (Parmenides, p. 180, n. 2). The smoke of
Commentary: CXI—CXII (D. 98, 7) 257
CXII would then be only a figure for the underlying unity in which
our nostrils would detect superficial differences. Kirk and others
have assimilated this to the one-in-many idea illustrated by incense in
CXXIII (D. 67). But the conditional of CXII is potential, not counter-
factual. Things do become smoke; and the possibility of everything
going up in smoke is paralleled by the thought of fire ‘catching up’
with all things in CXXI (D. 66). Reinhardt's ingenious reading of
CXII is designed to avoid this obvious parallel, since he wished to
eliminate any allusion to cosmic conflagration or judgment by fire
from the fragments. Leaving aside this issue, I suggest we take the
imagery of CXII literally and ask: what kind of fire might turn all
things to smoke?
There are two plausible possibilities: the altar flame and the funeral
pyre. The former points to the imagery of incense in CXXIII (D. 67);
but then CXII gives us no information beyond what we could derive
from CXXIII alone.3®! But if the fire is a funeral pyre, then ‘turning
to smoke' alludes to the fate of men after death, and the exhalation
here will be directly linked to that of CXI (D. 98), which is inhaled
by souls who ‘smell things in Hades’.362
The question then is: how much information can these remarks
about smell and exhalation give us concerning Heraclitus’ conception
of the afterlife? I first propose an answer that is independent of the
elaborate myth in Plutarch’s context for CXI; I then consider the
possibility of other Heraclitean elements in this myth.
A minimal meaning for CXI is provided by the popular etymology
for ‘Hades’ (Greek Ades, since the initial aspirate does not occur in
the Ionic dialect of Heraclitus): a-idés means ‘invisible’.36? ‘Souls
smell things in the invisible realm' then means: souls use another sense
to perceive what they cannot see. (This confirms the link with CXII:
the differences which become invisible if all things turn to smoke will
still be perceptible to smell.) But the normal connotations of ‘Hades’
also involve the fate of the psyche after death. As the living man
kindles a new light for himself when he is ‘quenched in his vision’
(XC, D. 26), so the psyche of a dead man replaces the light of life by
another form of perception. And since smell is connected with smoke
and cloudy exhalation, there should be some contrast between these
souls and the best and wisest who, as a beam of light (augé), have
affinities rather with the upper, clearer sky and the brighter sense of
vision. The souls that smell in Hades and that are associated with
smoke are likely to be the breath or pneuma-souls of most men, circu-
lating in the lower, murkier atmosphere when they leave the body at
death. Only the exceptional (and driest) souls will soar aloft to look
258 Commentary: CXI—CXII (D. 98, 7)
down as guardians on the world below. On this reading, the souls,
smoke, and smell of CXI—CXII refer to the ordinary souls of ordinary
men, whose bodies will (in some cases) have been burnt to smoke,
and whose souls and bodies thus suffer similar fates after death, in
contrast to the select souls of CIX (D. 118) and CX (D. 63), whose
destiny leads them up towards celestial light, while their body pur-
sues its own elemental course below.
It is fascinating, though rather unprofitable, to consider how far
Plutarch's myth in The Face on the Moon (from which CXI is taken)
preserves authentic traces of Heraclitus! own eschatology. An extended
discussion would be out of place, because we must f?rst reconstruct
that eschatology before knowing how to recognize traces of it in
Plutarch’s tale. Plutarch's myth of the soul’s journey through the
atmosphere to a region beginning at the moon, and then upwards to
a purer condition in the sun, is predominantly Platonic in inspiration,
with a liberal admixture of Aristotelian, Stoic, and other ingredients.
There is no general method for sifting out the Heraclitean component.
I simply note the following points as relevant to an evaluation of
CXI.
The quotation is prepared by an identification of Hades with the
region between earth and moon.36^4 Just before our quotation this
region, ‘the gentlest part of the air’, is described as ‘the meadows of
Hades’ (943C). CXI refers to the purified souls who have travelled
through this upper air and reached the moon: ‘in appearance resem-
bling a ray of light (aktis) but in respect of their nature . . . resembling
the aithér about the moon, they [sc. these souls] get from it both
tension and strength as edged instruments get a temper, for what lax-
ness and diffuseness they still have is strengthened and becomes firm
and translucent (diauges). In consequence they are nourished by any
exhalation that reaches them, and Heraclitus was right in saying:
“Souls employ the sense of smell in Hades" ’ (943D—E, tr. Cherniss).
The point of the quotation is that smell serves these refined beings in
place of more substantial food.565 While waiting in their lunar or
lower habitation for the final purification that will take them on to
the sun, these spirits are not inactive. Among other beneficial roles,
these daimones serve as ‘guardians (phylakes) and chastisers of acts
of injustice’ on earth, ‘and they flash forth (epilampousin) as saviors
manifest in war and on sea' (944D, after Cherniss).
If I am correct in locating the souls of the dead in the atmosphere
and upper sky, Plutarch's account of Hades is largely Heraclitean.
Only he has blurred the distinction I draw between ordinary souls in
Commentary: CXIII (D. A15, D. 12) 259
the lower air, who must rely upon smell, and the select souls that rise
higher and take the form of light. Plutarch has combined the atmos-
pheric souls of CXI—CXII with the higher destiny depicted in CIX
(D. 118) and CX (D. 63), because the fundamental distinction in his
myth is not between lower and upper atmosphere but between a
moon-destiny and a sun-destiny, corresponding to the Platonic dis-
tinction between a compound soul (psyché) and the purified intellect
(nous).
CXIII
СХША (D. A15) Aristotle: [(Many thinkers, above all those who considered
the cognitive powers of the psyche, identified it with their first principles or
archai.) And Heraclitus too says the first principle is «the same as> soul, since
he identifies it with the exhalation (anathymiasis) from which he produces all
the rest. And <he says it is? most incorporeal and always flowing.]
CXIIIB (D. 12) Cleanthes cited by Arius Didymus: [Zeno says the soul isa
percipient exhalation, like Heraclitus. For the latter, wanting to show that souls
as they are exhaled (anathy miómenai) are continually becoming intelligent
(noerai), likened them to rivers when he said: *As they step into the same rivers,
other and still others waters flow upon them’ (L). But souls too steam up (or ‘are
exhaled’, anathy mióntai) from moisture.]
The literal quotation in CXIIIB has already been discussed (L, D. 12);
here we are concerned only with the context from Cleanthes and the
parallel in Aristotle.566
Aristotle and Cleanthes agree in describing Heraclitus’ psyche as an
anathymuasis or ‘exhalation’. But what is this? The Latin exhalatio
(which has provided the established translation since Lucretius and
Cicero) has the etymological sense of ‘breathing out’; whereas the
Greek term rather connotes ‘billowing up’ and typically applies to
smoke or steam. The uncompounded form of the verb (thymuasthat)
is commonly used for burning incense or causing smoke. The prefix
(ana-) emphasizes upward motion, so that the rarer compound anathy-
miasthai has the sense ‘steam up, rise in fume or vapor’ (LSJ). There
is no doubt, then, that Aristotle and Cleanthes ascribe to Heraclitus
the view presented here, that the psyche is essentially not fire but an
atmospheric principle like air, breath, or vapor. Both authors add the
information that this psychic exhalation is percipient or cognitive.367
This information must be correct, as we can see from Heraclitus’ own
remarks on the psyche as well as from the Ionian doctrine of aér as
developed by Diogenes.3®8
More problematic is Cleanthes’ comment that ‘souls steam up from
260 Commentary: CXIV (D. 119)
moisture’. I take this to be a paraphrase of CII (D. 36) ‘out of water
psyche arises (ginetai)'. But anathymiasis may also be used for vapors
or gas produced from food and liquids within the body.369 In the
context preceding CXIIIB, sperm is described as ‘a fragment of the
psyche', a mixture of breath (pneuma) and moisture, which after
conception develops as embryo from moisture in the womb.37°
Other Stoic sources speak of the soul as pneuma nourished by blood
in the body, and some commentators would understand Cleanthes’
words here in just this sense: souls are exhaled by evaporation from
the blood or from the internal river of humors in the body.37!
This Stoic doctrine is a natural development of Heraclitus’ view.
(Compare the similar doctrine of vital pneuma or 'animal spirits' in
Aristotle's biology.) But I see no reason to attribute this or any other
physiological doctrine to Heraclitus himself.57? The anathymiasis
referred to by Aristotle in CXIIIA is clearly cosmic or elemental: it
is ‘the exhalation from which he (sc. Heraclitus) derives everything
else’.375
I conclude by mentioning, without attempting to resolve, some
curious difficulties in understanding Cleanthes’ exegesis in CXIIIB.
Even if we grant his dubious assumption that the Heraclitean river is
an image for the soul, it is strange that he believes this text was
intended ‘to show that souls as they are exhaled are always becoming
intelligent (noerat)’.374 Perhaps Cleanthes simply took for granted
that the rivers were fluids within the body, so that their ‘waters’
could be interpreted as exhalations or vapors; such vapors, as pneuma,
will be perceptive and intelligent according to the Stoic theory of
pneuma. But the only safe conclusion is that Cleanthes allowed him-
self great freedom in reading Stoic doctrines into Heraclitean
texts.575
CXIV
CXIV (D. 119) Man's character is his fate (literally, his daimon or divinity).
The doctrine of CXIV has been discussed above in commenting on
XCVI-CXII. (See especially pp. 252f.) Here I consider the literal
interpretation of this marvellously brief and symmetrical three-word
utterance: éthos anthrópoói daimón, ‘character, for man «is his»
daimón'. The meaning of the sentence depends on the sense given to
daimon.
Commentary: CXIV (D. 119) 261
On the simplest view daimón signifies one's destiny, one's pros-
perity or misfortune. Although in Homer and other authors the word
is often used synonymously with theos ‘god’ (as in LVII, D. 79), the
root meaning of daimon is ‘one who distributes or assigns a portion’.
This etymological value shows up in the two common compounds:
eudaimon ‘with a favorable daimon', ‘happy’, ‘prosperous’, ‘fortunate’;
and kakodaimon, ‘with a bad (unfavorable) daimon', ‘unlucky’,
*miserable'. Hence the most obvious sense of CXIV is that it is a man's
own character, not some external power, that assigns to him the
quality of his life, his fortune for good or for ill. His lot is determined
by the kind of person he is, by the kind of choices he habitually
таКеѕ,376 and by the psychophysical consequences they entail or to
which they correspond. And since the fate of the psyche after death
will be a direct prolongation of its life and death, one's destiny now
and to come is a function of one's basic choice between a noble and
a bestial career. The cause is not in the stars but in ourselves.
This primary meaning of CXIV is further enriched if we take
daimón literally as ‘god’ or ‘divinity’. For the gods of Heraclitus, the
immortals who live our deaths and are dead in our lives, can only be
the elemental powers and constituents of the cosmos, from which
our life comes and to which it returns. (Again the terminology of
Heraclitus anticipates that of Empedocles, who designates his four
elements as daimones in fr. 59.) The character of a man is thus
identified with the corresponding element: moisture for the sensual-
ists and topers, wasteful fire for the choleric, damp or smoky vapors
for the souls of most men, a gleam of light for the wisest and best.
These cosmic divinities are not merely emblematic of different kinds
of lives, like Aphrodite and Artemis in Euripides’ Hippolytus.377
They constitute the physical explanation or psychophysical identity
of the particular life in question, the elemental equivalent of a given
moral and intellectual character. So read, CXIV offers a concentrated
résumé of the doctrine of the dozen fragments just discussed.
A third reading emerges as a special case of the other two, if we
recall Hesiod's use of daimones for the spirits of the golden race, be-
come watchmen of justice after their death. I have suggested that in
CX (D. 63) these guardian spirits are identified with the wisest and
best souls, looking down from above as radiant light or astral fire.
For the select souls too it is the character of the man that determines
his fate as daimón, as occupant or visitor in the highest region of mor-
tality, the celestial terminus of the upward path.378
262 Commentary: CXV (D. 14)
CXV
CXV (D. 14) The mysteries current among men initiate them into impiety.
CXV is preceded in Clement by a list of mystery mongers: ‘night-
wandering sorcerers (mago:), Bacchoi, Lenai, mystic initiates (mystaz):
it is these he threatens with the afterlife, for these he prophesies the
fire’. Most editors have recognized in this list of imposters the original
context of CXV. But the authenticity of the list has recently been
challenged on the grounds that the entire outburst could well have
been added by Clement.?79 The five Greek words in question (from
nyktopoloi ‘nightwandering’ to mysta? ‘mystic initiates’) are syntac-
tically blended with Clement’s text in such a way that we cannot be
sure whether or not they come from Heraclitus. It seems to me more
probable that they do, for the following reasons.
CXV cannot stand alone; it calls out for some context. What con-
text would be more appropriate than this reference to representative
types of mystery religion? Of the five words in the list, Lénaz is a rare
archaic form more likely to have been used by Heraclitus than by
Clement, as Reinhardt agreed.389 Secondly, an early mystic sense for
Bacchoi (‘elect’, ‘chosen by the god’), implied in a verse quoted by
Plato (Phaedo 69C—D: ‘many are the narthéx-bearers, few the
Bacchoi’), is confirmed by a new gold tablet found in South Italy,
dated about 400 B.C., which speaks of ‘the long sacred way travelled
<in the underworld> by famous bacchoi and mystai’.38! This helps
to establish the credentials of three words on our list. As for the
other two (‘nightwandering magot’), nothing much hangs on their
authenticity; but I am inclined to regard them also as genuine.
Heraclitus will thus have seasoned his attack on Greek cult with a
further sally against the holy men of the Persians.98? However, the
brunt of the attack is directed against the religion of his countrymen:
Dionysian and Eleusinian mysteries here, phallic and orgiastic ritual
in CXVI (D. 15), Apollonian purification rites and anthropomorphic
cult generally in CXVII (D. 5). (And compare the contempt for
funeral rites in LXXXVIII, D. 96.)
CXV tells us that initiation into the mysteries is impious, but does
not tell us why. Perhaps Heraclitus has in mind some specific features
of the ritual, some explicit sexual symbolism, so that (as in the men-
tion of ‘shamelessness’ in CXVI) he is calling attention to the fact
that in the name of piety men will perform, and applaud others who
perform, acts which they normally regard with ridicule or disgust:
tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
Commentary: CXVI (D. 15) 263
But even if this conjecture is correct, it does not go to the heart of
the matter. The central claim of the Eleusinian mysteries is to provide
a life-giving experience, a beatific spectacle: ‘Blessed is he among men
who has seen these rites; but he who has not shared in them will
never have a portion of similar blessings when he dies.’383 In an echo
of these verses Pindar announced that the one who has seen the
mysteries ‘knows the end of life and its god-given beginning’;
Sophocles added that ‘for these alone there is life in Hades; for others
everything is evil’.384 For Heraclitus the basic impiety of the mys-
teries will consist not in obscene symbolism but in the projection of
a false picture of life and afterlife — in the invention of lies and swear-
ing to them, in the promise of a magical connection between some
ritual act and the future destiny of the psyche.
The same condemnation will fall on those esoteric cults represented
by the ‘Orphic’ gold tablets, with their detailed topography of the
next world and instructions for finding the right road. By distorting
the true relationship between life and death, by seeking special
exemption from the laws of cosmic justice which establish a necessary
connection between the habitual conduct and character of a man and
his destiny in this life and beyond, the spokesmen for such mysteries
play the role of false witnesses in the gravest of all matters. Their
impiety will be fittingly punished by Justice herself, in the natural
course of events (LXXXVII, D. 28B).
Heraclitus’ polemic is not directed against vulgar superstition, the
cult of the uneducated masses, as some commentators suppose. The
religion under attack is that of Pindar and Sophocles; it includes those
western mysteries that attracted the tyrant Theron of Acragas and
the heroic figures buried in the Timpone Grande and Timpone Piccolo
at Thurii.385 Heraclitus is not an aristocrat or conservative in religious
matters. He is a radical, an uncompromising rationalist, whose nega-
tive critique of the tradition is more extreme than that of Plato a cen-
tury later. Plato breaks only with current beliefs about the gods; in
matters of cult he follows the principle that custom is king. Not so
Heraclitus. Despite his great respect for nomos as the legal order and
moral cement of the community, in matters of piety and psychic
destiny he denounces what is customary among men (ta nomizo-
mena) as a tissue of folly and falsehood.
CXVI
CXVI(D.15) fit were not Dionysus for whom they march in procession and
chant the hymn to the phallus (eidoia), their action would be most shameless
264 Commentary: CXVI (D. 15)
(anaidestata). But Hades (Aidés) and Dionysus are the same, him for whom they
rave and celebrate Lenaia.
What does Heraclitus mean by identifying Dionysus with Hades, and
phallic cult with Bacchic frenzy? The statement is a riddle, and we
must be satisfied with partial solutions.986
The most obviously correct interpretation takes Hades here as rep-
resentative of death and the phallic Dionysus as representative of
sexual vitality. So understood, the riddle reformulates the equivalence
(i.e. interchangeability) of life and death expressed in XCII (D. 62)
and XCIII (D. 88).387 A second, deeper reading regards Dionysus not
only as god of vitality and procreation but also as god of drink and
madness. I have suggested that XCVIII (D. 20) depicts sexual activity
as a waste of psyche, an expense of life-force liquefied as semen, just
as drunkenness is a partial death and darkening of the soul by lique-
faction (CVI, D. 117). The ‘death’ of psyche by the ‘birth’ of fluid in
ejaculation coincides in the long run with the birth of the son that
will supplant his father. Thus the desire of men ‘to іме... and to
leave children behind’ is really a desire for their own death and
replacement.
The identification of the god of sexuality with the god of death,
reinforced by the word play on ‘shame’, ‘phallic song’, ‘shamelessness’,
and ‘Hades’, restates in symbolic form the contempt for the life-
death of men who sate themselves like cattle (XCVII, D. 29). What is
new in CXVI is the characterization of the phallic god in terms of
ritual madness.388 The Lenaia appear here as a festival of Bacchic
frenzy, not a wine festival (as some have supposed).389 Dionysus is
the god of wine; but CXVI does not mention either wine or drunken-
ness. The point of CXVI lies in the reference to ritual madness as an
explanation of the identity of Dionysus with Hades. The final com-
ment on phallic worship would thus be the thought expressed in
CXVII: ‘anyone who noticed someone doing this would think he was
mad’. A perceptive observer of ritual mania, recognizing it as insanity,
would see the appropriateness of worshipping the god of sensuality
and procreation with acts of madness. For he would recognize
Dionysus as Hades, the invisible (a-idés) figure of Death, and recog-
nize madness itself, like drunkenness, as a kind of psychic death, a
darkness of soul at maximal distance from the light of sound thinking
(sophronein). It is true witlessness and forgetfulness of self, ‘not
knowing what one is doing awake, just as men forget what they do in
sleep’, to waste one’s psyche in sexual indulgence or darken it in
Commentary: CXVI (D. 15) 265
madness (and we would add: or with drugs), not realizing that what
passes for enhanced vitality is a sheer pursuit of death.
It would be a mistake, I think, to see Heraclitus as an apostle of
chastity, some St Paul or Gandhi come before his time. What concerns
him is not so much action or abstention but lucidity: to know what
we are doing. As human beings we sate ourselves like animals; we
want to see our children grow up and outlive us. (We also lose control
of ourselves in anger, and occasionally moisten our souls with drink.)
Heraclitus is not calling for some ascetic reform of human existence
in which these features would disappear. Our condition is one of
mortality, and Heraclitus offers no way out. What he does offer is
insight into this condition, recognition of the deadly tendencies
within life itself, and admiration for those few men whose gaze is
enlightened by wisdom. For these will look beyond the cyclical fate
that must be ours in any case and choose *one thing in exchange for
all’ — the light of wisdom, symbolized and embodied in the gleam of
cosmic fire.
The pessimism of Heraclitus is not that of Schopenhauer or certain
Eastern mystics, who see the cycle of human existence as slavery and
seek liberation by deliberate renunciation. His pessimism lies closer to
the lesson of Solon in Herodotus: *thus the god made plain that it was
better for a man to be dead than to live’ (1.31.3). This is not a recipe
for suicide but for bearing death, your own death and the death of
those dear to you, with courage and the peace of mind that comes
from bitter wisdom.
The word play at the center of CXVI calls for some comment. The
identification of Dionysus and Hades, fertility and insanity, is medi-
ated by verbal connections between genitals (azdoza), shame (aidós),
shamelessness (anaidestata), and Hades (4:425). The sacred phallus is
designated as ‘pudenda’, objects of shame or modesty (aidoza). For
all the Greek delight in male nudity in art, in real life the genitals
were normally covered; and the public display of an erect penis
would probably be a source of mirth, if not embarrassment, as cer-
tain jokes in the Lysistrata make clear. Hence the paradox, expressed
in the double sense of aidés (‘shame’, but also ‘reverence’), that the
display of a giant phallus in grossly exaggerated form is treated not
with shame but reverence and respect. The obscene song and solemn
procession would be acts of utter shamelessness — anaidestata — if
not done in the name of Dionysus. For a Greek of traditional piety
that makes all the difference. But a sane man will see what is going
on. What prevents this behavior from being outrageous in his eyes is
266 | Commentary: CXVI (D. 5)
just the identity of Dionysus as the ‘unseen’ (Aides), the god of
death. Compare CXI, D. 98: ‘souls smell in Azdés’, in the land where
they cannot see. Other levels of meaning are generated by the play
on the god’s name, and there is no hope of cataloguing them all.39°
CXVII
CXVII (D. 5) They are purified in vain with blood, those polluted with blood,
as if someone who stepped in mud should try to wash himself with mud. Anyone
who noticed him doing this would think he was mad. And they pray to these
images as if they were chatting with houses, not recognizing what gods or even
heroes are like.
CXVII is remarkable for its length and its clarity. The absence of any-
thing enigmatic in this text might almost cast doubt on its authenticity,
if different portions were not cited by good and independent sources
(Clement, and Celsus in Origen). And a few stylistic features reveal
the hand of Heraclitus: the double construction of haimati ‘with
blood’, to be taken both with the preceding verb (‘are purified’) and
with the following participle (‘polluted’);39! the play on miainomenoi
‘polluted’ and mainomenoi ‘mad’; and the characteristic use of
gignósko ‘to recognize’ for philosophic insight. If Heraclitus speaks
here with unusual clarity and undisguised sarcasm, perhaps for once
his spontaneous indignation breaks through the restraints of an in-
direct and allusive style. But there is probably a more deliberate
motivation for this straightforward language.
I assume that CXVII appeared as climax and conclusion to the
critique of religious practices in CXV (D. 14) and CXVI (D. 15); that
critique is here generalized and its philosophical foundation laid bare.
Whereas CXV —CXVI are directed against specific cults of Demeter
and Dionysus, the target in CXVII is not only the Apollonian rite of
purification?9? but the general practice of Greek religion as centred
on temples and cult statues.
In this polemic Heraclitus’ predecessor is Xenophanes, who accused
Homer and Hesiod of ascribing to the gods *whatever is a scandal and
a reproach among men’ (frs. 11—12), and attacked both the principle
of theogony and the very notion that the gods have human form (fr.
14): if horses and oxen could produce images they would represent
their gods as hippomorphic and bovine (fr. 15). Xenophanes' irony
on this subject anticipates Heraclitus’ attack on images (agalmata).
And the principle of Xenophanes' critique is the same: the customary
Commentary: CXVIII (D. 32) 267
religion of the Greeks (and others) is systematic impiety, since it rests
on a failure to ‘recognize what gods are like’.393
The point of Heraclitus’ critique is nonetheless new and personal.
What Xenophanes attacks is a false conception of the gods. Heraclitus
shows how such theological error leads to action that is shameful and
ridiculous. The explicitness of the similes and the direct statement of
the thesis in CXVII are perhaps required because his goal here is so
difficult: to shock his reader or auditor into a realization of what is
in some sense ‘obvious’, that behavior endorsed by the strongest
sanctions of the society will reveal itself to a thoughtful observer as
odious and absurd, since if it were not done in the name of the gods
it would count as stupidity or insanity. The plain comparisons to
washing with mud and talking with houses serve the literary function
of Montesquieu’s visiting Persian: to suggest the simplicity of vision
of the child who sees that the emperor has no clothes.
The best parallel to this critique of idolatry is found not in Greek
literature but in the Old Testament, and this accounts for some of
the sympathy which a writer like Clement feels for Heraclitus. A man
cuts down a tree, half of it he burns in the fire and warms himself,
‘and the rest of it he makes into a god’; he falls down before it and
‘prays to it and says “Deliver me, for thou art my god!" ' (Isaiah
44.17). The affinity is real, though wholly negative. Heraclitus and
the Old Testament are at one in their rejection of anthropomorphic
cult; their new conceptions of deity are entirely different. Heraclitus'
god is neither personal nor transcendent; it is wholly immanent in the
world and identical with the order of the cosmos over time. Herac-
litus might have spoken like Spinoza of Deus sive Natura: 'god, that
is to say the nature of things'. But like a true Greek he more often
speaks of ‘gods’ in the plural. When he does refer to the divine as
unique, we are confronted with a new paradox.
CXVIII
CXVIII (D. 32) The wise is one alone, unwilling and willing to be spoken of by
the name of Zeus (Zénos onoma ‘the name of life").
With deliberate antinomy Heraclitus here presents his positive con-
ception of the divine, to be more fully spelled out in the next five
fragments (CXIX—CXXIII). The aphorism is unusually dense and
puzzling, full of conflicting forces mysteriously under control. The
268 | Commentary: CXVIII (D. 32)
most striking features are: (1) the complex subject expression, with
its echo of ‘wise’ and ‘the one wise’ from other fragments, but with
the ambiguous addition of mounon ‘only’; (2) the focus on ‘the name
of Zeus’, with the old genitive form Zénos (instead of the usual Dios,
as in XLV, D. 120); and (3) the formal contradiction between denial
and affirmation, which is even more explicit in the Greek (‘is not will-
ing and is willing").594
(1) The neuter adjective sophon *wise' occurs in three other texts:
XXVII (D. 108), XXXVI (D. 50) and LIV (D. 41). (See the discussion
of these texts above, pp. 171f.) Now in XXXVI wisdom defines a cer-
tain mode of listening and speaking, just as in XXXII (D. 112) sophie
specifies a type of speaking, perceiving, and acting. In these cases, as
in the reference to the best soul as ‘wisest’ (sophotate) in CIX (D.
118), Heraclitus implies that wisdom can and should belong to a
human soul.395 But this implication is tacitly challenged in XXVII
(D. 108), where what is wise is ‘set apart from all’. Other statements
emphasize that the cognitive distance between men and gods is so
great that what passes for wisdom among us is mere folly in com-
parison with their insight (LV—LVIII, D. 78, 82—3, 79, 70). These
remarks help to explain the insistence in CXVIII that there is only
one thing wise, the supreme divinity. In a coincidence that can
scarcely be accidental a similar assertion in LIV (D. 41) begins with
precisely the same three words: hen to sophon ‘one the wise’ (LIV,
D. 41). But that text goes on to describe this singular wisdom in
terms that might at least in principle apply to human beings: ‘to
know (ог ‘to master’, epistasthaz) the plan (gnome) by which it steers
all things through all’. In commenting on LIV I have argued that this
ambiguity is fundamental and irreducible: wisdom in the full sense is
accessible only to the divine ruler of the universe, since it means
mastering the plan by which the cosmos is governed. For human
beings such wisdom can serve only as an ideal target, a goal to be
pursued by homo-logein, by agreement with the logos: putting
one's own thought, speech, and action in harmony with the universal
course of things.
CXVIII describes this wisdom from the divine point of view, as the
supreme cosmic principle, whose unity and uniqueness are underlined
by the word ‘alone’ (mounon), ambiguously placed between the sub-
ject phrase ‘the wise one’ (or ‘one, the wise’) and the predicate: ‘does
and does not wish to be called “Zeus” ’. Taking mounon with the
subject, we can read the noun phrase as a complete sentence: ‘the
wise <is> one alone’. This formula rules out any irreducible plurality
Commentary: CXVIII (D. 32) 269
within the divine power of wisdom and guidance. But Heraclitus is
no monotheist. Like Plato, Aristotle, and all other Greek thinkers
outside the Biblical tradition, he is uninhibited in his use of ‘god’
(theos) in the plural. The monism of the philosophers takes the form
of ‘henotheism’, the conception of a single supreme god, as in Xeno-
phanes fr. 23: ‘one god, the greatest among gods and men’. By
employing the impersonal neuter form ‘the wise one’ (hen instead of
the masculine hezs) Heraclitus suggests an even more radical break
with the anthropomorphic conception of deity, a precedent for the
impersonal (or transpersonal) One of Plotinus. And the violence of
this rupture with traditional theology is further indicated by the
initial negation: the wise one is not willing to be identified with Zeus.
A second reading will construe mounon (‘alone’, ‘only’) with what
follows; and this can be done in two ways: with the infinitival phrase
(‘the only thing to be called by the name of Zeus’), or with the noun
onoma ‘name’ (‘to be called only by the name of Zeus’, ‘by the name
“Zeus” alone’).396 The former construal fits the affirmative clause:
cosmic wisdom is the only thing that can be designated as supreme
ruler. The latter construction matches the more emphatic denial: this
wisdom will not accept any one name as uniquely appropriate, for it
may equally well be called ‘Fire’, ‘War’, ‘Justice’, or ‘Attunement’
(harmonié). Indeed, it may be ‘named according to the pleasure of
each one’ (CXXIII, D. 67).
(2) The phrase ‘to be spoken of (legesthaz) by the name of Zeus
(Zénos)’ means ‘to be called “Zeus” ’, but it must mean more than
that. Heraclitus uses the verb legesthat where we might expect
kaleisthai ‘to be called’ or onomazesthai ‘to be named’. And we find
‘Zeus. in the genitive, where the nominative construction would be
more usual. The genitive construction permits him to employ the old
poetic form Zénos instead of the standard prose form Dios. And it
calls our attention to the word onoma ‘name’.
I think it would be a mistake to regard these unusual features of
diction as insignificant and unrelated to one another. They converge
in focussing interest on the correct name for divine wisdom. The
Greeks were always concerned to name the gods appropriately, to
call them by names pleasing to them so as to win their good will.
Now it seems obvious that the supreme principle would be willing to
be called ‘Zeus’, since this is the traditional name for the reigning
deity, father of gods and men. (Compare the formula for War in
LXXXIII, D. 53.) But this concession to traditional usage comes only
after, and despite, the more emphatic claim that the wise One is un-
270 | Commentary: CXVIII (D. 32)
willing to be so called. The denial that this name is pleasing may, I
have suggested, be read as a denial that any single name is uniquely
privileged. But it can more easily be understood as a rejection of the
traditional conception of deity, associated with the name ‘Zeus’ in
ordinary cult and in the poets’ description.
The form Zénos points to a deeper reading. For an author who
delights in word play, Zénos recalls the verb zén ‘to live’. According
to the Cratylus, Zeus is so called because he is ‘the cause of life (zen)
... through whom life belongs in every case to all living things’
(396A7ff.; cf. 410D). Such etymological play with the name for
Zeus was rampant in the archaic period.39” And this particular
etymology is clearly presupposed by Aeschylus in the Suppliants
(584f.). Now for Heraclitus as for Aeschylus ‘etymology’ must be
taken literally: an etymos logos is a *true statement' hidden in the
form of a name. In LXXIX (D. 48) the name of the bow asserts the
deeper unity between life and death. In CXVIII the name Zénos
affirms that the supreme deity is also a principle of life, like the
‘everliving fire’ in which it is manifest.398
As for the verb legesthai here instead of ‘to call’ or ‘to name’, its
use is probably motivated by the etymology: in this name (onoma) a
statement (logos) is hidden. And we might detect overtones of the
larger significance of logos for Heraclitus.
(3) Why does Heraclitus formulate CXVIII as an explicit contra-
diction? This antithetical form can be seen as exhibiting in its own
structure the dialectical moment in his general doctrine of opposition:
a strong sense of the positive force lurking behind a negation. (See
above, pp. 188f.) But the contradiction can also be understood
within the context of his attitude to language and assertion (legesthaz),
which is one of profound ambivalence: a definite statement on
matters of such supreme importance can be taken both as true and as
false. This ambivalence reflects neither an intrinsic defect of language
nor a conception of reality as incoherent or irrational. It springs
rather from a grave sense of risk in communication, a risk amounting
almost to a certainty that he will be misunderstood. The need for
two-tongued statement is a consequence of the epistemic deafness of
his audience. If Heraclitus must, like the oracle, ‘neither declare
(legei) nor conceal but give a sign’, that is because his listeners cannot
follow a plain tale. If they had what it takes to comprehend his
message, the truth would already be apparent to them. But since
words alone cannot make them understand *when their souls do not
speak the language’, he must resort to enigma, image, paradox, and
Commentary: CXIX—CXXII (D. 64—66, 16) 271
even contradiction, to tease or shock the audience into giving thought
to the obvious, and thus enable them to see what is staring them in
the face. If they succeed, they will understand not this sentence alone
but the unified world view that Heraclitus means to communicate.
And central to such understanding will be a recognition that the
principle of cosmic order is indeed a principle of life, but that it is
not willing to be called by this name alone. For it is also a principle
of death. Human wisdom culminates in this insight that life and death
are two sides of the same coin. And cosmic wisdom is truly spoken
of only when identified with both sides of the coin.
Thus the linguistic forms of antithesis and paradox combine with
ambiguity and resonance for the expression of a total view, no part
of which is fully intelligible in separation from the whole.
CXIX—CXXII
CXIX (D. 64) The thunderbolt pilots all things.
CXX (D. 65) Hippolytus (immediately following CXIX): [By ‘thunderbolt’ he
means the eternal fire. And he says this fire is intelligent (phronimon) and cause
of the organization of the universe. He calls it 'need and satiety' (D. 65). Accord-
ing to him ‘need’ (chrésmosyné) is the construction of the world order, ‘satiety’
(koros) is the conflagration (ekpyrésis). For he says... ] (What follows is CXXI.)
CXXI (D. 66) Fire coming on will discern (krinei, literally ‘separate’) and catch
up with all things.
CXXII (D. 16) How will one hide from (lathoi, ‘escape the notice of’) that
which never sets?
I group these four texts together because they agree in conceiving the
supreme principle of the universe as cosmic or celestial fire. In the
case of CXX, however, it is only Hippolytus’ commentary that con-
nects ‘need and satiety’ with the concept of fire. I postpone for a
moment the discussion of Hippolytus’ interpretation.
The imagery of the helmsman in CXIX (oiakizei ‘pilots’, from огах,
the tiller of a ship) recalls the ‘steering’ of all things in LIV (D. 41).
The latter is introduced by the phrase hen to sophon, ‘the wise is one’,
which is repeated in CXVIII for the divine intelligence that rules the
cosmos. That intelligence, ambivalently identified with Zeus, is rep-
resented by his characteristic weapon in CXIX, where the fiery
thunderbolt stands as symbol for the counterpoint themes of unity
272 Commentary: CXIX—CXXII (D. 64—66, 16)
(‘the wise one’) and totality (‘pilotting all things’) that form the warp
and woof of cosmic order.
The metaphor of the helmsman guiding the ship of state is as old
as Greek lyric poetry. And the cognate metaphor for cosmic govern-
ance is probably as old as Greek philosophy. Anaximander seems to
have said of the Boundless that it ‘contains all things and steers
(kybernan) them all’.399 The metaphor of cosmic steering becomes а
standard one in Ionian natural philosophy, but its use in CXIX and
LIV may be a direct echo of Anaximander’s words.*09 However,
Heraclitus never takes over a motif without altering it. In CXIX the
new philosophic theme of an intelligent regulation for the cosmos is
invoked in terms of the mythic ruling power of the supreme god, as
directly experienced in the most terrifying of natural events: the
lightning bolt and the crash of thunder.
CXXI takes up the theme of fire (which connects the thunderbolt
of CXIX with the cosmic fire of XXXVII, D. 30, the préstér of
XXXVIII, D. 31А, and the ‘fiery Zeus! of XLV, D. 120) and expli-
cates its control over ‘all things’ (panta) by means of three verbs:
(i) it comes upon (epelthon) all things, (ii) it will discern or decide or
distinguish them (krinez), and (iii) it will seize or catch hold of them
all (katalépsetai). Cosmic guidance is thus reinterpreted in terms of
cosmic justice, as indicated by the direct parallel to LXXXVII (D.
28B), where Diké herself is subject of the third verb: she ‘will catch
up with those who fabricate and bear witness to lies’. But in CXXI
the scope of justice is universal: it will catch up with all things.
The notion of cosmic Justice, introduced by Anaximander, is sys-
tematically developed by Негасііїиѕ.40! Justice as expressed by dikë
normally implies punishment, as Heraclitus himself seems to have
pointed out (LXIX, D. 23). And both punishment and compensation
are suggested by the word antamoibé ‘requital’, which denotes the
exchange of all things for fire in XL (D. 90). I recall these points here
because the authenticity of CXXI was challenged by Reinhardt on
the grounds that it imports into Heraclitus’ text the Christian notions
of hellfire and Last Judgment which Bishop Hippolytus wished to
find there.*92 But justice, judgment, and punishment of some sort
are represented in the fragments in any case. CXXI introduces the
notion of hellfire only if we interpret judgment in the specifically
Christian sense, and there is no reason to follow Hippolytus in this
regard. Instead, consider the literal meaning of the three verbs.
(i) Fire comes upon or ‘attacks’ all things (in Herodotus epelthein
is often but not always used for the advance upon an enemy ); (ii) it
Commentary: CXIX—CX XII (D. 64—66, 16) 273
will discern, distinguish, or judge all things (krinet), and (iii) it will
catch up with and seize hold of them (katalépsetat), which should
mean that they will literally catch fire. The universal approach of fire
is depicted as hostile and threatening, but not exclusively so. For
krinein may mean to select someone for special honors, to judge a
contest in his favor, as well as to judge him guilty or subject to
punishment. The verb has the same ambivalence as ‘requital’ (anta-
тоё) in XL (D. 90). According to the merits of the case, the
seizure of a thing by fire will entail either its punishment or its
reward, its promotion upwards to enhanced life or downwards to
elemental death.
As executor of universal justice, Fire here plays the role of Justice
herself and her ministers the Furies in XLIV (D. 94).493 Now Justice
is also identified with Conflict and opposition (LXXXII, D. 80). If
Heraclitus’ thought and imagery are coherent, the Fire which figures
as justice must stand not only for the principle of cosmic guidance
(like the thunderbolt of CXIX) but also for the cosmic structure of
opposition, as reflected in the measured kindling and extinction of
XXXVII (D. 30). Ultimately these two notions will coincide: it is
precisely by means of polar opposition that wisdom orders the uni-
verse and distinguishes the upward and downward paths of reward
and punishment.
To make sense of this, however, we must distinguish two roles for
fire in Heraclitus. In the first place fire is conceived as one elemental
form among others, an alternative to earth or water or clouds and
wind. It is not easy to find in the fragments an unambiguous refer-
ence to fire in this narrow, elemental ѕепѕе.404 But the ordinary sense
of fire is obviously presupposed by every use of the term. On the
other hand, when the everliving fire of XXXVII is identified with the
world order or kosmos as such, it is presented as the system of all
elemental forms that emerge as it is kindled and quenched. If we
accept (as I propose) a pattern of cosmogony and universal confla-
gration for Heraclitus, then this trans-elemental role is embodied in
the primordial Fire that precedes and alternates with the formation
of the world. We need not return here to the controversial issues of
cosmogony and ecpyrosis: in a general conflagration the fate of all
things will be the same, so this can throw no special light on the
judicious discernment by fire. Insofar as Heraclitus has such a total
conflagration in view, CXXI tells us only that cosmic justice and sym-
metry require that at some point all things return to the source from
which they first emerged.
274 Commentary: CXIX —C XXII (D. 64-66, 16)
On any reading of XXXVIII (D. 31A), in which water, earth, and
the like are presented as ‘reversals’ of fire, as on any interpretation of
the exchange of all things for fire in XL (D. 90), we must allow for
some privileged role for fire that sets it apart from the other elements.
There must be some sense, symbolical if not physical, in which fire
represents the world order as a whole and the principle of cosmic
justice. How are we to conceive this role of fire within the present
constitution of the universe?
I will suggest in a moment a view (not very easy to understand)
according to which fire passes physically through all other natural
forms and phenomena. But first we recall that fire appears both as
representative of death, in the funeral pyre, and also as the highest
afterlife for pre-eminent souls who, as a beam of light (auge), are
associated with, or absorbed into, the celestial fire of the sun and
stars (above, pp. 250f., 256). Secondly, in natural phenomena such as
the lightning bolt, the fiery préstér, and the ‘all-seeing sun’, fire is the
embodiment and instrument of cosmic wisdom. It is just this tra-
ditional conception of the sun as ‘eye of Zeus’ or ‘eye of Justice’ that
explains the allusion to divine insight as a sun which never sets in
CXXII (D. 16), an unsleeping eye whose notice one cannot hope to
еѕсаре.405
Underlying the imagery of CXXII, then, we find the analogy be-
tween sun and cosmic fire that is also implied by the solstitial ‘turn-
ings (tropat) of fire’ in XXXVIII (D. 31). The traditional role of the
Sun as observer must be taken over by its cosmic analogue, since the
sun itself is under higher surveillance (XLIV, D. 94) and, extinguished
each night, it is unavailable as a possible observer for half of a man's
lifetime. The conception of cosmic fire as a kind of super-sun thus
unites the mythical ideas of divine justice associated with Zeus and
Helios and the new Ionian view of rational order as pervading the
entire natural world. Without following Reinhardt in recognizing a
direct quotation in the comment (in CXX) that ‘this fire is intelligent
(phronimon)’, we can see this as an accurate statement.
Our interpretation of CXXII is confirmed by a passage already
referred to in Plato's Cratylus, where he is expounding the doctrine
of flux and offers two connected etymologies for ‘Zeus’ and ‘just’
(dikaion). Plato here mentions the view that there is something which
pervades or passes through all things and is cause of everything that
comes about (412D). This universal causal factor is the swiftest and
finest of all things.
And because it administers (epitropeuet) all things by moving
Commentary: CXIX—CXXII (D. 64—66, 16) 275
through (dia-ion) them, it was rightly called by this name dikaion
just’... And someone said it was right to call it Zeus [in the
accusative Dia] as the cause: for the cause is that because (dia) of
which things happen. (412D8—413A5)
Socrates claims he has been able to learn these doctrines only with
great difficulty, as secret lore; and he found that his informants could
not agree on any further answer to his persistent question: what is
just?
One of them says it is the sun that is just (dika?on); for it alone by
moving through (dia-ion) and burning (kaon) administers all
beings. But when I tell this to someone else . . . he laughs at me
and asks if I think there is nothing just once the sun has set. When
I persist in asking what he takes justice to be, he says it is fire. But
this is not easy to understand. Another says it is not fire itself but
the very heat which is present in fire. Another one claims to laugh
at all these views and says the just is what Anaxagoras meant:
intelligence (nous). For this is the supreme power and, being mixed
with nothing else, it sets all things in order by moving through
them all. (413B3—C7)
How far this account is based upon Plato's own reading of Heraclitus,
how far it reflects the exegesis of earlier Heracliteans, we can only
guess. The connections between the sun, elemental fire, supreme
intelligence, and the cosmic causal factor are all to be found in the
fragments.*06 What Plato adds is that the fiery wisdom of the uni-
verse sets things in order by moving through them. And perhaps this
is a natural interpretation of CXXI: ‘fire coming on (epelthon) . . .
will catch up with all things’. This view of fire as literally penetrating
everything in the world would fully agree with other pre-Platonic
attempts to conceive the causal action of the supreme principle in
terms of physical presence and penetration.*9? Heraclitus must also
have thought of his divine principle as in some sense all-pervasive,
immanent in the natural order and in all of its constituents, as the
‘pantheistic’ tendency of CXXIII (D. 67) will make clear. The Greeks
before Plato and after Aristotle seem able to conceive of the spiritual
or intelligent ordering of the world only in terms of a rarified, all-
pervading physical presence, like the ether of pre-Einsteinian physics.
Even in the fourth century A.D., Augustine was able to free himself
from this corporeal view of God only by the study of Neoplatonic
metaphysics. The Stoics speak of the supreme deity in pre-Socratic
fashion, as breath (pneuma) or rational fire (pyr noeron), a power
which orders all things by ‘passing through them all’.4°8
276 | Commentary: CXXIII (D. 67)
I have left for the end the phrase ‘need (chrésmosyné) and satiety
(koros)’ (CXX, D. 65), whose authenticity is guaranteed by indepen-
dent citations in Philo and Plutarch. All three authors reflect a Stoic
interpretation which identifies the two terms with successive stages
in the cosmic cycle: *Need is the construction of the world order
(diakosmésis), Satiety is the universal conflagration (ekpyrosis).' I see
no way of deciding whether or not this interpretation is based upon
something in the lost context of CXX. The Stoics may simply have
taken their clue from Theophrastus, who construed the related pairs
War-Peace and Strife-Agreement as a reference to these cosmic periods:
*of the opposites the one that leads to generation and coming-to-be is
called “war” and “strife”; the one leading to the conflagration is
called “agreement” and “peace” ’ (D.L. IX.8: see Appendix ITA). In
the exegesis of CXX ‘Need’ takes the place of ‘Strife’, ‘Satiety’ re-
places ‘Peace’ and ‘agreement’. The substitution was an easy one,
given the parallel pairs of CXXIII.
Perhaps the only safe conclusion from such reports is that Herac-
litus presented ‘Need and Satiety’ in some close connection with fire.
(Cf. ‘hunger’ and ‘satiety’ in CXXIII.) The actual phenomenon of fire
may be characterized intuitively in terms of ‘need’ (or ‘hunger’) for
fuel, and ‘repletion’ or ‘satiety’ when it burns itself out. In Greek
koros 'satiety' suggests hybris and carries connotations of disaster.
(Hence the Stoic interpretation of koros as the destruction of the
world order.) We recall the analogy between Aybris and destructive
fire in CIV (D. 43). If the kindling and extinction of fire is taken as a
figure for the cosmic order, this pattern may be redescribed as Need
and Satiety.
For a similar pairing of Hunger (limos) and Satiety, see LXVII (D.
111).
CXXIII
CXXIII (D. 67) The god: day and night, winter and summer, war and peace,
satiety and hunger. It alters, as when mingled with perfumes it gets named accord-
ing to the pleasure (hédoné) of each one.
CXXIII consists of two distinct sentences connected by the particle
de. The first of these announces as its topic ‘the god’ (ho theos) and
offers as comment four pairs of antithetical nouns.*°9 The second
sentence begins with a verb ‘it alters’ or ‘it becomes different’ (allo-
Томат) without any subject expressed, and continues with a complex
Commentary: CXXIII (D. 67) 271
comparative clause containing a subordinate clause of time: ‘just as,
when it is mingled with perfumes, it is named according to the
pleasure of each one’. Again no subject noun is provided for either
clause (unless we add one, as many editors have done). There is thus
a sharp formal contrast between the two sentences: the first consists
of nine nouns in the nominative, with no syntax, simply a list of
names; the second sentence is all syntax, with three finite verb clauses
but no subject noun. In the first the god is described by a formal pat-
tern of antitheses; in the second by a verb of process, explicated in
turn by analogy to another process. This elaborate formal asymmetry
gives us a strong prima facte reason for resisting the editorial temp-
tation to introduce a subject noun into the second sentence. I con-
sider the two sentences in turn.
(1) This is the only definition of deity in the fragments. Other
texts dealing with the gods may be divided into four groups. Group I
develops the traditional contrast between divine insight and human
ignorance, but tells us nothing further about the divine.*19 Group II
posits a mysterious equivalence between gods and humans, immortals
and mortals, suggesting some deeper unity in which these opposites
are reconciled.*!! Group III speaks in mythical terms of specific gods:
Dionysus and Hades (equated in CXVI, D. 15), Dike and her servants
the Furies (XLIV, D. 94; cf. LXIX, D. 23 and LXXXVII, D. 28B),
Apollo ‘whose oracle is in Delphi'.*!1? The references to Justice point
to a fourth group, in which CXXIII will be included. These are the
texts that invoke a supreme principle of cosmic unity which lies
beyond the traditional Greek conception of the divine. In two cases
the principle described in terms appropriate to deity is explicitly con-
trasted with gods (theo?) as normally understood: War, which has
made some gods and others men (LXXXIII, D. 53); and the cosmic
Fire, which ‘no one either of gods or of men has made’ (XXXVII, D.
30).
War and Fire thus appear as designations of the new super-Zeus, a
principle of universal order and justice that must coincide with 'the
wise one alone' of CXVIII (D. 32). It is this principle that we have
just seen described as Thunderbolt, Fire, or a sun *which never
sets’.4!3 It must be the same supreme principle that nourishes all
human laws as ‘the divine one’ in XXX (D. 114): ‘it prevails as it will
and suffices for all and is more than enough’.
We thus find two quite distinct conceptions of deity in Heraclitus.
The gods in general as opposed to men, including individual powers
designated by traditional names (other than Zeus and Dike), are con-
278 | Commentary: CXXIII (D. 67)
ceived as one member of a polar opposition (immortals-mortals,
Hades-Dionysus), and hence as partial constituents which, if isolated,
cannot be identified with the world order as a whole.*!* On the other
hand there is ‘the divine one’ or ‘the wise one’, the principle of unity
represented by War and Fire and identified with the kosmos that is
‘common to all’ (XXXVII, D. 30). Now the antitheses which follow
make clear that ‘the god’ of CXXIII must also represent this universal
principle of cosmic unity. But it is striking that the definition given
in our sentence makes no use of the network of terms by which this
concept is articulated in other fragments: cosmic Fire, unique wis-
dom, universal steering, the logos according to which all things come
to pass. Instead, CXXIII displays the divine plan in typical instances
of its constituent structure.
Four pairs of opposites divide into two groups. Day and night,
winter and summer define the cosmic order of change and regularity
within which human life is carried on. The last two pairs (war and
peace, satiety and famine) represent extreme human experiences of
disruption and restoration. But all four pairs are characterized by a
common pattern: the alternation and interdependence of a positive
and a negative term. Thus war and famine represent things dangerous
and destructive, while peace and satiety represent what is positive
and desirable. A similar positive-negative contrast underlies the
antitheses of the first group: summer is the good season (kalokairi
‘fair weather’ in Modern Greek: the ancient name theros suggests
‘crops’), whereas winter is named from ‘storm’ (cheimon); daylight
stands for life, but Night is the fearful power of darkness (hence her
euphemistic name euphroné ‘the kindly one’, used throughout the
fragments).*15 Now the regularity of the seasons and the changing
ratio of day and night was recognized as the very pattern of cosmic
plan, the work of an ordering intellect.*16 The formal symmetry of
our sentence seems to make a similar point about the negative and
positive extremes of human experience. By the ‘measures’ of cosmic
order, peace and war, satiety and hunger are necessarily joined
together within a total unity that is ‘the god’. But whereas other
fragments assert the unity of a specific pair of opposites, what our
sentence adds is the thesis of unity for all the pairs.*!?
Except for war and peace, the antitheses of CXXIII all reappear in
other {тартепіѕ.418 The pairing of war and peace is unique, since
elsewhere War stands alone for the cosmic order (LXXXII, D. 80;
LXXXIII, D. 53). We thus recognize a duality in the role of war,
which figures here as one constituent of a particular antithesis and
Commentary: CXXIII (D. 67) 279
there as the principle of antithesis as such, just as we have distinguished
a partial and a total conception of deity and a particular (elemental)
and universal (cosmic) role for fire. There is no one term that can
designate the principle of total order without ambiguity.
It would be pointless to debate whether these four pairs of oppo-
sites are to be attributed to the god as predicates or strictly identified
with him as alternative descriptions. The logical dichotomy between
the ‘is’ of predication and the ‘is’ of identity is a conceptual anach-
ronism, which does violence to the simple directness of Heraclitus'
language. God is in some sense defined by or identified with the
opposites here, though of course he (or it) cannot be identified with
any one, or with any pair, taken alone. Nor can the list be regarded
as an exhaustive account of deity: the god will be strictly identical
only with the total pattern of opposition, of which these four pairs
are paradigmatic specimens.
This pattern is the order of the universe, its unifying structure as a
balancing of opposites over time. The god identified in CXXIII is
neither a physical substance nor an underlying element, nor any con-
crete body like elemental fire. This is obvious from the first sentence,
but often forgotten in the exegesis of what follows.
(2) ‘It alters, as when mingled with perfumes it gets named accord-
ing to the pleasure of each.’ What is it that alters or becomes ‘other
in kind’ (alloios)? The god, surely. But not the god as some under-
lying subject or substrate that could manifest itself in the opposites
taken one at a time, being actually and in itself an entity distinct
from them all. This substratum-interpretation of CXXIII, which is
encouraged by a superficial reading of the simile of incense as well as
by the Aristotelian view of Heraclitean fire as material cause, is
clearly ruled out by the preceding sentence. For there is no one sub-
ject which might become first day, then night, then winter or sum-
mer, war or peace. Days and nights are themselves part of, and modi-
fied by, summer and winter, just as they are qualified in turn by war
and peace. The four pairs of opposites are in no sense alternatives to
one another, as potential attributes of some one underlying subject,
in the way that different fragrances may characterize a single fire. It
is only between the two terms of any given pair that a change of this
kind can be understood. So the verb ‘it alters’ must refer to a change
from any one term to its opposite — or, more generally, to every
change between opposites. This is the divine structure of cosmic pro-
cess according to Heraclitus. It is a misreading of the simile to sup-
pose that there is some process by which cosmic fire might change
280 Commentary: CXXIII (D. 67)
from day to winter, from peace to famine, or from one pair of
opposites to another pair. And it is the same misreading that leads so
many editors to insert ‘fire’ or some other noun as subject of the
clause ‘when it is mingled with perfume’.*!9 For the altar flame is of
course distinct from the incense or spices that are thrown upon it. All
the more reason why Heraclitus should have avoided here any explicit
mention of fire. His simile holds not between the transformations of
the god and the mingling of fire with incense but between the differ-
ent manifestations of the god and the alternative naming (of the fire
— or of the god?) when so mingled. As there is one fire called by
many names, so there is one divine system of unity and opposition
that has just been designated by four pairs of opposites.
As it stands, the subject of this clause (as of the entire second sen-
tence) is nameless: it acquires a name only from the spices with which
it is mixed, and in which the namer takes 'pleasure'. Since the remote
subject of the preceding sentence is ‘the god’, and since we are given
no subject here, the text suggests that it is the god himself who
appears as fire mingled with incense: the cosmic god has his epiphany
in the flame burning on the altar. Once the text is ‘corrected’ by the
editors we find no such mysterious identity between the universal
deity and the sacrificial fire, indeed no mystery at all but a trans-
parent and misleading simile.
The final phrase, ‘named according to the pleasure (hédoné) of
each', may be read in two ways. According to an old technical use of
hédoné for a flavor or perfume, it means simply that the unnamed
fire receives the name of each spice that is added to 1.420 But this is
not the ordinary sense of hédoné (for example, in Herodotus); and
even if Heraclitus alludes to this special usage here, it is difficult to
believe that he meant to exclude the standard meaning of the word
‘pleasure’. On that reading the phrase with hekastou will mean not
‘according to the flavor of each spice’ but ‘according to the pleasure
of each man (who so names it)’. It is not that the naming of the divine
by means of opposites is arbitrary or subjective, depending upon per-
sonal whim, but rather that the positive and negative values of
opposing names are relative to the human perspective and to the per-
sonal experience of the individual. Mankind perceives the contrast,
the otherness (alloios) of daylight and nocturnal darkness, hunger
and surfeit, but not the unity which binds each pair together, and
which is the same principle of antithesis throughout: ‘It is disease
that makes health sweet and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest’
(LXVII, D. 111).42!
Commentary: CXXIV (D. 10) 281
Hippolytus tells us that CXXIII was found *in the same section' as
CXX—CXXI (D. 65—6).42? This is one of the very few cases where
my arrangement of the fragments rests on documentary evidence.
(But Hippolytus’ remark does not include CXXII, D. 16, which I
have grouped here because of its thematic link with what precedes.)
CXXIV
CXXIV (D. 10) Graspings (syllapsies): wholes and not wholes, convergent
divergent, consonant dissonant, from all things one and from one thing all.
The form of this fragment recalls the first sentence in CXXIII (D. 67):
a topic is posed by the opening word, then explicated by a series of
opposing terms. But whereas the surface structure of CXXIII was
clear, with a subject (‘the god’) singled out by the definite article, in
CXXIV the initial term is itself enigmatic and we scarcely know what
is being asserted of what. Both in form and content these two frag-
ments serve as complements to one another, providing a kind of sum-
mary of Heraclitus' thought. They might well have been placed
together here, at or near the end of the book.
(1) As first word, and the only term not paired with an antithesis,
the plural form syllapsies emerges as the topic upon which the follow-
ing pairs will comment. But what does this word mean? Most com-
mentators, groping for some clue, assign to syllapsies a sense that will
fit the rest of the sentence: ‘Zusammensetzungen’ (Snell), ‘things
taken together’ (Kirk), ‘connections’ (Marcovich), ‘assemblages’
(Bollack-Wismann). But none of these senses is attested for syllapsis
(Attic syllépsis) in archaic or classical usage. Such renderings tend to
short-circuit the process of understanding, by taking as point of
departure an interpretation that can only be reached by an analysis
of the whole sentence.*?? Before Aristotle (for whom the word can
mean biological ‘conception’ or ‘pregnancy’), the only sense attested
for syllépsis is the bodily notion of ‘seizing, laying hold of, arresting,
apprehending’ (LSJ s.v. sy/lépsis II; this is still the standard meaning
of the term in Modern Greek). Now the cognate verb katalépsetai is
twice used by Heraclitus in this sense of personal capture (LXXXVII,
D. 28, and CXXI, D. 66; cf. elabomen and katelabomen in XXII, D.
56). If we are to take Heraclitus at his word, our interpretation must
begin with the literal sense of grasping or seizure, as in the capture of
someone trying to escape. Commentators have generally neglected
this ordinary meaning of the word because it makes CXXIV harder
282 Commentary: CXXIV (D. 10)
to understand. But who ever supposed that Heraclitus was an easy
author?
This initial sense of syllapsies becomes less puzzling once we
realize that CXXIV characterizes the structure of the universe and
remember that this structure is an order of justice involving punish-
ment and reward. We are then free to connect the image of seizing a
fugitive with other statements about the impossibility of escape
(CXXII, D. 16; XLIV, D. 94; cf. LXXXVII, D. 28 and CXXI, D. 66).
By this initial echo of the themes of fire and Justice laying hands on
guilty ones, the term syllapsies will recall the dimension of cosmic
justice that is similarly invoked by the term antamoibé ‘requital’ for
the mutual exchange between fire and all things in XL (D. 90).
Other, less usual senses of syllapsis (or syllépsis) are nonetheless
essential for deciphering CXXIV. (1) Syllépsis is etymologically a
‘taking-together’, a physical conjunction or concatenation of sounds
or the like, as in the cognate syllabé, ‘syllable’. (2) Syllépsis can desig-
nate the cognitive act of collecting together, comprehending, or sum-
ming up. This sense of the noun is unattested in classical usage, but
well represented for the corresponding verb syllambanein ‘to compre-
hend’; it might easily be understood here as a recondite hyponoia.
Since Snell’s study of our fragment in 1941 (Hermes 76, 84—7), it
has been recognized that sy//apsies must be taken here in sense (1) or
(2). We need not choose between the two, any more than we need to
choose between the two sides of the action-object ambiguity: between
the act of grasping and the things grasped. ‘Graspings’ may be under-
stood here both in the physical and the cognitive sense, both as act
and as object. Syllapsies will denote the pairwise structuring of reality,
and also the act of intelligence by which this structure is gathered
together.
(2) ‘Wholes and not wholes.’ It is the neuter form of these two
terms (hola kai ouk hola) which obliges us to go beyond the usual
meaning of ѕу/ерѕіѕ as ‘seizure (of a person)’. If it is not a question
of someone being captured, what kind of apprehending is going on
here? Answer: things whole and things not whole.*?* In cognitive
terms the contrast between ‘wholes’ and ‘not wholes’ points to the
most abstract and general feature of intellectual synthesis: combining
objects in thought and seeing them together as larger unities. Of all
conceptual antitheses, only the opposition of unity and plurality is
of comparable generality. (See the contrast of ‘one’ and ‘many’ in the
final pair of CXXIV.) In form the opposition of wholes and not
Commentary: CXXIV (D. 10) 283
wholes is even more general, since it exhibits the basic logical pattern
of affirmation and denial: Yes and No. Both terms also express in
their plural form the idea of the manifold as such. And in terms of
semantic content, the notion of *wholes' indicates a subordinate
diversity of parts and thus a greater richness of structure, a more
organic unity, than the contrast of one and many alone. We might say
that the notion of *whole' expresses the concept of unity as dynamic
rather than static: each unit is built up out of an internal plurality
and grouped in turn within some wider plurality. In the language of
set theory, each set short of the universal set is both a whole (since it
is a unit including one or more members) and not a whole, since it is
not all-inclusive. The literal sense of holos is ‘complete, lacking in
none of its parts’. Strictly speaking, there can be only one whole, one
unity from which nothing is lacking. (Hence to holon comes to mean
‘the universe’.) But all unities short of the universe itself will be both
wholes and not wholes.
Beginning with the cognitive notion of bringing things together as
totalities in thought, we have been led to speak of the correlative
unity of structures or objects synthesized. But these structures remain
general and abstract. Terms like whole and part, positive and negative,
one and many, indicate purely formal features that can apply (like
the concepts which Ryle has called ‘topic-neutral’) to any subject
matter whatsoever. Thus there is a crucial difference of type between
such abstract opposites and the more concrete, ‘substantive’ oppo-
sitions illustrated in CXXIII: day and night, summer and winter,
peace and war, satiety and famine. It is in virtue of this distinction
that CXXIV and CXXIII supplement one another as a summary of
the doctrine of opposites. Unlike the formal antitheses of CXXIV,
the opposites of CXXIII are directly instantiated in human life and in
nature, like the terms of XCIII (D. 88): living and dead, waking and
sleeping, young and old.
Understood as forms of ‘combinations’ (syllapsies) in the world,
then, terms like wholes and not wholes are logically of a higher type:
we must think of them as applying to some particular substantive
term, such as day or night, life or death. One can say of each day or
each individual life that it is a distinct whole, with beginning, middle,
and end. But we can also, and even more truly, say that it is not a
whole, since it is only a part of some larger unity: of the diurnal
cycle of day-and-night, or of the Heraclitean cycle of life-and-death
by which immortals live the death of mortals. Thus the topic-neutral
284 Commentary: CXXIV (D. 10)
opposites of CXXIV give us a formal characterization of the view
expressed in the claim that Day and Night are one (XIX, D. 57), and
generalized in the statement that ‘all things are one’ (XXXVI, D. 50).
(3) ‘Convergent, divergent.’ Intuitively, the pair of participles
sympheromenon diapheromenon suggests local motion: the move-
ment of plurality together (syn-) in the direction of unity, balanced
by the movement apart (dia-) to diversity. This spatial imagery may
be taken as a figure for the dynamic tension between totality and
partiality, unity and diversity that runs through all cases of opposition.
But we should also take these participles literally, as depicting an
actual process of alternating motion towards unity and diversity, as
in the concluding antithesis: ‘from all things one and from one thing
all’.
Even more unmistakable is the metaphorical sense of symphero-
menon and diapheromenon as ‘agreeing with’, ‘being advantageous
to’ (the usual sense of sympherei in the active voice), and ‘quarrelling
with’, ‘being hostile to’. So understood, this antithesis echoes the
references to Agreement and Conflict in so many other fragments,
and specifically in LXXVIII (D. 51): ‘how in variance it agrees with
itself’. Recall the pairing of peace and war in CXXIII. Peace and
conflict, amity and hostility are the forms in which the principles of
unity and diversity are directly manifested within the social life of
mankind.
(4) ‘Consonant, dissonant.’ Synaidon and diaidon mean literally
‘singing together’ and ‘singing apart'.*?5 There has been much learned
attention devoted to the state of musical practice and terminology
in Heraclitus’ day, and it has been emphatically denied that harmonié
in LXXVIII (D. 51) and LXXX (D. 54) can refer to the harmony or
‘concord’ of several notes struck or sung together, like chords in
unison.*?6 But in any case the musical antithesis, following as it does
here upon ‘coming together-disagreeing’, must be significantly related
to the harmonié or ‘attunement’ of the lyre in LXXVIII, since the
latter is precisely said ‘to agree in variance with itself’. I leave it to
historians of Greek music to decide (if they can) what forms of con-
sonance and dissonance Heraclitus may have had in mind. There are
several obvious applications: the strings of the lyre may sound either
in agreement with one another or out of tune; the singer himself may
sing either in harmony or in discord with his instrument; and several
unaccompanied human voices may sing together with or without the
desired accord.
Music is a strikingly specific instance of unity and diversity; and
Commentary: CXXIV (D. 10) 285
we may ask what accounts for this special role of music for Heraclitus.
There is no doubt of the privileged status enjoyed by music and the
lyre in the aristocratic culture of archaic Greece. (Think of the scene
in Iliad IX, where Agamemnon's ambassadors find Achilles in his hut
singing to the lyre.) And the formal patterns of Greek music were
regarded as familiar examples of a unity and 'agreement' that requires
as its basis an objective diversity of sounds and tones. (This is the
thought which Aristotle, following Plato, ascribes to Heraclitus in
LXXV, D. 8.) But I suspect that Heraclitus was also influenced by
the kind of Pythagorean speculation concerning the musical numbers
and the cosmic role of harmonic ratios that is reflected in the frag-
ments of Philolaus.*?7 For if we see in Heraclitus’ development of
the theme of musical harmonié a reaction to Pythagorean ideas, there
will be a direct connection between this emphasis on music and his
conception of cosmic order in terms of ‘measures’ and proportion
(logos).
(5) ‘From all things one and from one thing all.’ As final deter-
mination of the concept of ‘graspings’, Heraclitus here names the
themes of unity and plurality which dominate the fragment and
characterize his thought throughout. (It is easy to imagine these
words as closure for the book, or at least as closing the positive state-
ment of doctrine. They would thus form a ring pattern with ‘all
things are one’ in XXXVI, D. 50.) However, Heraclitus does not refer
to plurality as such (polla ‘many’) but to a plurality that is total and
all-inclusive: panta ‘all things’.428 It is not the numerical contrast
between the one and the many that is the focus of concern, but the
world-constituting antithesis between unity and totality: the one and
the all.
Since this final chiastic pairing of antithetical terms provides a kind
of summary for all that has gone before, any elaborate commentary
would be repetitious. I call attention only to the dynamic, emergent
form of the contrast: ‘X out of Y, and Y out of X". In cognitive
terms we might understand these two moments as alternating phases
of synthesis and analysis, the seeing-together and seeing-apart which
characterizes intelligence in general and the understanding of oppo-
sites in particular.*?? But beyond this dialectical structure of cog-
nition, there is surely some reference to the monism expressed in
XXXVI (D. 50): ‘all things are one’. And the reciprocal movement
from pluralized totality (panta) to unity (hen) and back again recalls
the exchange of all things (ta panta) for fire and fire for all things in
XL (D. 90). Whatever interpretation fits the universal exchange for
286 | Commentary: CXXIV (D. 10)
fire must also apply somehow to the alternation between all things
and one. I have given my reasons for finding a Heraclitean allusion to
some vast cosmic cycle involving the emergence of the world order
from fire and its reabsorption into the same principle, as in the pat-
tern of Stoic ecpyrosis (above, pp. 134ff., 145ff.). At the very least,
the ‘turnings’ (tropaz) of fire in XXXVIII (D. 31) will imply a suc-
cession of cosmic seasons marked by the prevalence of fire at one
extreme and its withdrawal to some minimum position in the opposite
phase, like the sun at winter solstice. On either reading, the alternation
of one and all things in CXXIV will correspond to the kindling and
quenching of cosmic fire in XXXVII (D. 30). The history of early
Greek philosophy suggests an obvious parallel in the cosmic cycle of
Empedocles, described in terms that echo CXXIV (Empedocles fr.
17.1—20; cf. fr. 26). Other parallels do not require a cycle of cos-
mogony and world-destruction. Thus in the Milesian pattern of
apokrisis or separating-out, all things are separated from the Apeiron,
or from the boundless Air; and this process of dispersion must be
continually balanced by a movement of contraction and condensation.
(So in Anaxagoras, frs. 2, 4, and 12—16.)
Hence the physical interpretation of ‘one thing from all, all things
from one' will include, but need not be limited to, a cycle of alternat-
ing cosmic periods. The abstract form of this antithesis excludes any
univocal reference to such a cosmic pattern. That pattern will serve,
like conflict and amity, musical accord and dissonance, as a paradigm
of the unity-in-opposition manifested by every system of rational
structure. The kindling and quenching of cosmic fire, mirrored in the
alternation of day and night, summer and winter, is of significance
for Heraclitus because it reveals the same pattern as the alternation
of waking and sleeping, youth and age, life and death, satiety and
hunger. It is this general pattern of unity whose formal structure is
articulated by the 'graspings' of CXXIV.
By way of conclusion, I offer a paraphrase of CXXIV that states
more fully the thought that Heraclitus has deliberately schematized
in his elliptical style. (The words in italics are added to make the
fuller statement explicit.)
*Graspings, that is to say groups holding together, apprehensions
bringing things together: these are wholes and not wholes; they
characterize a system which ts convergent, divergent, structured by
cooperation and by conflict; this system is consonant, dissonant,
held together by harmony and discord alike; from all its components
a unity emerges, and from this unity all things emerge.’
Commentary: CXXV (D. 124) 287
CXXV
CXXV (D. 124) Theophrastus: [The fairest order in the world (‘the most
beautiful kosmos’), says Heraclitus, is a heap of random sweepings.]
Since even the text of Theophrastus is badly preserved, there is no
hope of recovering the original passage which he cites. At least the
play on kosmos (‘adornment’ and ‘world-order’) must belong to
Heraclitus. And some reference to a random collection must also be
authentic, if the quotation is to have any point in Theophrastus' con-
text. The implied production of the fairest celestial arrangement from
a random assortment of refuse would be a striking illustration of the
paradoxical connection of opposites.
Beyond this any interpretation must be a conjecture. My best
guess at Heraclitus' point is that the structure of the universal system
described in CXXIII and CXXIV is so strict and so all-pervasive that
chance and providence must coincide: any random arrangement of
material, any arbitrary sample of human life or evidence from nature
must exhibit the same pattern and illustrate the same plan (gnome).
This thought would not be too remote from Aristotle's comment on
the anecdote about the visitors who came to meet Heraclitus, but
hesitated to enter when they found him warming himself at the
kitchen fire. Seeing them at the door, he called out, *Enter with con-
fidence, for here too there are gods.' Citing this story in justification
of his study of the structure of animals great and small, Aristotle
remarks: *in all these things there is some element of nature and
beauty? $30
Appendix I:
Dubious quotations from
Herachtus
I translate here, for the sake of completeness, the eight fragments
listed as genuine by Diels but not included in my own translation and
commentary. Reasons for omission differ from case to case. D. 67a
and D. 125a seem to me straightforward forgeries, like some of the
examples which Diels listed as spurious (D. 126a—139); D. 46 may
belong in the same category. On the other hand, there is no reason to
doubt the authenticity of the single word listed as D. 122, but also
no hint of a sentential context and hence no way to construe it as a
meaningful fragment. In the case of the two citations from Iamblichus
(D. 68 and 69), the situation is rather similar: we seem to have a term
quoted without any reliable indication of the original context. (I have
included a comparable quotation from Iamblichus among the frag-
ments proper, D. 70, LVIII, since it fits plausibly into a context pro-
vided by other fragments.) Many editors have accepted D. 49a asa
genuine quotation, but I can only see it as a thinly disguised para-
phrase of the river fragments (L and LI), modelled on the contra-
dictory form of CXVIII (D. 32), and influenced by the thought of
XCII (D. 62): we are and are not alive.*?! The text of D. 4 is ina
class by itself: preserved in Latin by Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth
century A.D., with no hint of a Greek source, it seems nonetheless
to preserve a Heraclitean kernel; and I have used it with some hesi-
tation in the commentary on LXX—LXXII.
I should add that among the fragments included in my text and
commentary there are at least two of doubtful authenticity: XLI (D.
76) and CI (D. 115). Also, several of my 'fragments' are doxographic
reports rather than verbal citations: XXIII (D. 105), XXIV (D. 38),
XLIII (D. A13 and A5), and CXIII (D. A15 and D. 12).
Dubious quotations 289
D.4(M.38,p.188) Albertus Magnus: Heraclitus said that if happiness lay in
bodily delights, we would say that cattle are happy when they find bitter vetch
(orobus) to eat.
D. 46 (M. 114, рр. 573ff.) Diogenes Laertius: He said that conceit (oiësis) was
a sacred disease [i.e. epilepsy] and seeing was being deceived. 132
D. 49а (M. 40c?, pp. 199f.; cf. p. 211) Heraclitus Homericus: (Heraclitus the
obscure says...) ‘Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and we
are not.’
D. 67a (M. 115, pp. 576ff.) | Hisdosus Scholasticus: Heraclitus gives an excel-
lent comparison of the soul to a spider and the body to the spider's web. As the
spider, he says, waiting in the middle of the web, notices as soon as a fly breaks
any thread and then quickly runs to the spot, as if she suffered until her web is
repaired, just so does the soul of a human being, when any part of the body is
harmed, move swiftly to that place, as if disturbed by the wound of the body, to
which it is tightly and proportionately linked.433
D. 68 (M. 88, p. 469) Iamblichus: In the holy seeing and hearing of shameful
things we are released from the harm that is caused by the corresponding deeds
<as in the cathartic effect of comedy and tragedy on the emotions? ... And
therefore it was reasonable of Heraclitus to call these practices ‘remedies’ (akea),
as having a healing effect upon the 5001.434
D. 69 (M. 98g, p. 518) Iamblichus: Hence I posit two kinds of sacrifices. The
first are those of wholly purified men, such as may occur rarely in the case of a
single man, as Heraclitus says, or a very small number; the other kind are
immersed in matter, corporeal, and produced by change.435
D. 122 (M. 111, р. 565) Suidas: Heraclitus used the form anchibasié (‘stepping
near’),
D. 125a (M. 106, p. 543) Tzetzes: May your wealth never fail you, men of
Ephesus, so that your wretchedness may be fully exposed.436
Two texts listed by Diels among the spurious fragments are of some
doctrinal interest:
D. 136 (M. 96b, p. 509) Scholia to Epictetus: ‘Souls killed in war are purer
than those <that die? in diseases.’ This is a late commentary on C (D. 24).
D. 137 (M. 28dl,p.135) Aetius: ‘Things are altogether determined by fate
(heimarmena).’ See on XLIIIB (n. 180).
Appendix IT:
Doxographic reports
(A) From the Life of Heraclitus in Diogenes Laertius (IX.7—1 1), fol-
lowing an epitome from Theophrastus' Opinions of the Natural
Philosophers.
7. In general his opinions are these: all things are composed out of fire and dis-
solved into it. Everything takes place according to Fate, and things are har-
moniously fitted together by the transformation of opposites.437 Also, all
things are full of souls (psychai) and divine spirits (daimones). He discussed all
the phenomena which occur in the cosmos, and said the sun is the size it appears
(cf. XLVII, D. 3). Another saying of his: ‘You will not find out the limits of the
soul by going, even if you travel over every way, so deep is its logos' (XXXV, D.
45). And he said that conceit is a sacred disease [i.e. epilepsy] and seeing is
being deceived (D. 46: see Appendix I above). His book contains some brilliant,
clear passages, which even the dullest can easily understand and hence get some
spiritual enrichment (literally ‘elevation of soul’). The brevity and density (baros
‘weight’) of his style are incomparable.
8. In detail his doctrines are these: Fire is the elementary principle (stoicheion)
and all things are an exchange for fire (cf. XL, D. 90), produced by rarefaction
and condensation. But he does not expound this clearly. Everything occurs
through opposition (cf. LXXXI, D. A22), and the whole world flows like a river
(cf. L, D. 12 and LI, D. 91); but the universe is finite, and there is one world (cf.
XXXVII, D. 30). It is generated from fire and ignited again in a conflagration
according to certain cycles, alternating for all time (cf. XLIIIA, D. A13); this
takes place in accordance with Fate. Of the opposites, the one leading to gener-
ation is called War and Conflict (cf. LXXXII, D. 80, and LXXXIII, D. 53); the
one leading to the conflagration (ekpyrósis) is called Agreement and Реасе (cf.
LXXVIII, D. 51 and CXXIII, D. 67). Change is a way up and down (CIII, D. 60),
and through this the world is produced.
9. As fire thickens it becomes moist and as it condenses it becomes water;
and water thickens and turns into earth (cf. XXXVIII, D. 31A). And this is the
way down. But in turn the earth dissolves, and from it water arises, and from
water everything else (cf. XXXIX, D. 31B), since he derives almost everything
from the exhalation (anathymiasis) out of the sea. And this is the way up.
Now exhalations arise from both earth and sea, some of them bright and pure,
others dark. Fire is augmented by the bright exhalations, moisture by the other
ones. He does not indicate what the surrounding heaven (to periechon) is like.
But in it there are certain bowls (skapha?) turned over with the hollow part
facing us, and bright exhalations gather together in these and produce flames,
which are the heavenly bodies.
10. The brightest and hottest is the flame of the sun; for the stars are farther
Doxography from Theophrastus 29]
away from the earth and for this reason they are less bright and give less heat
(cf. XLVI, D. 99). And the moon, although it is closer to the earth, does not
travel through a pure region. But the sun lies in a translucent, unmixed region
and at an appropriate (symmetron ‘proportionate’) distance from us. Hence it is
hotter and gives more light.
Eclipses of the sun and moon occur when the bowls are turned upright. The
moon's monthly change of shape is produced as the bowl in her case438 turns
little by little. Day and night, months and seasons and years, rainfall and wind
and the like take place according to the different exhalations.
11. The bright exhalation produces day when it catches fire in the circle of
the sun; but when the opposite exhalation prevails it produces night. And as
heat increases from the bright exhalation it makes summer; but when moisture
from the dark exhalation becomes excessive it produces winter (and rainstorm,
cheimon).
He gives an explanation of other things along the same lines. But he tells us
nothing about what the earth is like, or even about the bowls. Such were his
doctrines.
Commentary on the Theophrastean doxography
It is hard to know what to make of this report. The careful way in
which the gaps are noted — 'Heraclitus says nothing about the struc-
ture of the heavens, nothing about the earth’ — shows that it is not
an unscrupulous invention but a conscientious attempt to make sense
of the Heraclitean text. And in the first portion of the detailed report
(section 8 and the first paragraph of section 9) we can see what
Theophrastus' procedure was in interpreting this book, since we
happen to have most — perhaps all — of the texts he used. This pass-
age shows how Theophrastus, with the avowed goal of reconstructing
a physical theory out of Heraclitus’ enigmatic words, has pressed into
service utterances that might properly bear a different sense. For
example War and Strife, Peace and ‘Agreement’, are all interpreted in
terms of the ‘upward and downward path’, and the latter in turn
identified with the process of elemental transformations by which
the world is generated from fire. The tropa: or ‘reversals’ of XXXVIII,
D. 31A are similarly understood as water ‘turning into’ earth by con-
densation: pégnumenon trepesthai (DK I, p. 141, 1. 26).
Now if we look through the fragments where the original text is
unmistakable, we do not find a single word about the celestial bowls
and the two kinds of exhalations described in sections 9—11.439 Nor
do we find any clear reference to the heat of the sun, the position of
the stars, the region of the moon, nor any word about eclipse, lunar
phases, the cause of rainfall and other seasonal changes, not a single
word about any specific meteorological phenomenon except the
thunderbolt (CXIX, D. 64) and the mysterious préstér of XXXVIII
292 Appendix ПА
(D. 31A). One very partial fragment does refer to the seasons (XLII,
D. 100), and the lost context may have contained some information
on which Theophrastus is relying. But can we believe that this con-
text, or other fragments which are wholly lost, were so entirely dif-
ferent from the quotations that survive as to justify the reconstruction
of a physical theory of the kind that Theophrastus provides?
For my part, I cannot believe it. It seems likely that some lost text
of Heraclitus spoke of one or more ‘bowls’ in connection with sun or
stars, but quite unlikely that Heraclitus intended to formulate the
childish doctrine which Theophrastus has ascribed to him. As Kirk
noted, the theory of bowls will not explain what it is supposed to,
namely the phases of the moon and the shapes of sun and moon
when eclipsed. All the more reason not to ascribe it to Heraclitus as
a serious doctrine, in the absence of direct evidence.**9 As for the
two exhalations and the mixed region of the moon, they represent
something that Heraclitus might have said: the kind of meteorological
theory that is attested for the Milesians, Xenophanes, or other early
authors.**! There are significant parallels in the doxography for
Xenophanes.*#2 But the distance between what we find in the frag-
ments and in the doxography is so great as to convince me that
Theophrastus was fundamentally misled by his assumption that
Heraclitus was a physikos, a natural philosopher; and hence he sys-
tematically misread these riddles and allusions as the disguised state-
ment of a physical theory.
In consequence, I have made little or no use of the doxography to
reconstruct doctrines not directly attested either in literal quotations
or in paraphrases where the style of Heraclitus is still recognizable as
a partial guarantee of authenticity. My only conscious exception to
this rule is in the case of the number 10,800 for the Great Year,
where the reliance is restricted to a single number and its application.
(See above on XLIII.) But in the case of the celestial bowls, where we
have no corresponding information from the fragments, we must
simply suspend judgment. The problem is, as West has put it, ‘to
unravel Theophrastus’ knitting’, that is, to isolate the threads of evi-
dence from which he has woven his fabric of doctrine. For the bowls
I do not see that we have any reliable clues for such detective work,
and I offer no hypothetical solution.
In the case of the dual exhalation the situation is different. ‘He
had Heraclitus! book before him, and his dual-exhalation interpretation,
however Aristotelian, must have been an interpretation of something
in the book’ (West, p. 133). I see no reason to suppose (with Kirk)
Doxography from Sextus 293
that Theophrastus was correct in attributing a systematic theory of
exhalations to Heraclitus but mistaken in distinguishing two kinds of
exhalation. This is just the sort of detail for which Theophrastus
would generally be quite reliable. If he is unreliable in the case of
Heraclitus, it is not because of anachronism or carelessness in detail
but because of an error in principle, a mistake as to the nature of the
writer and the character of his work. Hence he construes as meteoro-
logical and astronomical theory what must have been intended as
something rather different. But the opposition of bright and dark in
the doctrine of vapors is just what seems most authentic in Theo-
phrastus’ report. It corresponds to the pre-scientific opposition be-
tween the murky lower region of mist (aer) and the bright sky above
(aithér).4#3 And it is echoed in the fragments themselves by the
description of the dry soul, the wisest and best, as a ‘gleam of light’
(augé: see above on CIX, D. 118). Here we are able to make sense of
Theophrastus’ doxography as a narrow physical reading of a doctrine
whose primary concern was with the fate of the psyche after death.***
In conclusion, I note that my scepticism with regard to the doxo-
graphical report is greater than most recent interpreters but not much
greater than Zeller’s.445 It was first Burnet (pp. 147ff.) and then,
curiously enough, Reinhardt (Parmenides pp. 181—3) who made use
of the doctrine of bowls and exhalations to reconstruct a physical
theory for Heraclitus. They have been followed in different ways by
Gigon, Kirk, Guthrie, and Marcovich. Thus we have the paradoxical
situation that at the time when doxographical reports concerning
other pre-Socratics were regarded with increased suspicion, the
doxography on Heraclitus came to enjoy more authority for Rein-
hardt and his successors than it had possessed for Zeller!
(B) The Doxography from Sextus Empiricus, Against the Math-
ematicians VII (7 Against the Logicians I). 126—34 (DK 22.A16)
126. Like most of the natural philosophers . . . Heraclitus regarded sense-
perception (aisthésis) as unreliable and proposed reason (logos) as the criterion
of truth. He refutes the claims of sense-perception in the following words: *Eyes
and ears are poor witnesses for men if they have barbarian souls! (XVI, D. 107);
which is the same as to say that it is the mark of barbarian souls to rely upon
irrational sense-perceptions.
127. The reason (logos) which he declares to be judge of truth is not any
ordinary sort but the logos which is shared or common (koinos) and divine. We
must briefly explain what this is. Our natural philosopher believed that the
medium which surrounds us (to periechon) is rational (logikon) and intelligent.
294 Appendix IIB
[128. Passages from Homer, Archilochus, and Euripides are cited to show
that this is an old and widely held view.]
129. According to Heraclitus it is by drawing in this divine reason (logos) in
respiration that we become intelligent, and «it is by the same principle that> in
sleep we become forgetful, but in waking we regain our senses. For in sleep the
passages of perception are shut, and hence the understanding (nous) in us is
separated from its natural unity with the surrounding medium; the only thing
preserved is the connection through breathing, which is like a root <of this
natural union>. So when separated, our understanding loses its former power
of memory.
130. But when we awake it goes out again through the passages of perception
as through so many windows, and by contact with the surrounding medium it
regains its rational power. Just as coals that are brought near the fire undergo a
change and are made incandescent, but die out when they are separated from it,
just so does the portion of the surrounding medium which resides as a stranger
in our bodies become nearly irrational (alogos) as a result of this separation, but
by the natural union through the multitude of passages when they are re-
opened? it attains a condition which is like in kind to the Whole [i.e. to the
divine Reason of the universe] .
131. Now it is this common and divine Reason, by participating in which we
become rational, that Heraclitus proposes as the criterion of truth. Hence what-
ever appears in common to all men is reliable, for it is grasped by the reason that
is common and divine; but an appearance that presents itself to only one person
is unreliable on the opposite grounds.
132. Thus at the very beginning of his work On the Nature of Things our
author refers in a way to the surrounding medium when he says ‘Although the
logos is so, men fail to comprehend . . . ' [There follows a citation of fragment
I, with three words omitted.]
133. In this passage he explicitly presents the view that it is by participation
in the divine Reason that we perform all our actions and all our thoughts. And a
little later he adds: therefore one should follow what is common .. . ‘Although
the logos is common, most men live as though their thinking were a private
possession’ (III, D. 2). But this logos is precisely an explanation of the way in
which the universe is organized. Therefore to the extent that we share in the
memory of this common reason, to this extent we know the truth; but when-
ever we go our private way we are deceived.
134. Thus in so many words he expressly declares the common reason (logos)
to be the criterion of truth, and he claims that what appears to all in common is
reliable, since it is judged by common reason; but what appears to each one
privately is false.
Commentary on IIB
I have rendered the entire context in Sextus because it presents the
fullest example of an ancient commentary on Heraclitus, from an
essentially Stoic point of view, and also because the sections on sleep
and the rationality of the circumambient medium or periechon have
been taken by some scholars as a reflection of authentic Heraclitean
doctrines not fully preserved in the extant fragments.*46
Sextus’ commentary is striking in two respects. Except for the
assumption that Heraclitus is a physicist, this interpretation has
Doxography from Sextus 295
nothing in common with the doxographical tradition represented in
Diogenes (Appendix IIA), but presents itself as an independent read-
ing of Heraclitus' text. And it interprets this text just as freely and
(from the modern point of view) just as arbitrarily as it provides
allegorical commentary on Homer and Archilochus in section 128.
The procedure is to give the meaning in advance, and then cite the
literal text as confirmation. (Compare Cleanthes’ interpretation of
D. 12 given above as CXIIIB, where the same technique is used. The
procedure is familiar to us from traditional methods of citing
Scripture.) Thus the personal ‘discourse’ or ‘report’ of Heraclitus is
identified with the cosmic Reason (or, more cautiously, in section
133, with the exegésis or ‘explanation’ of the cosmic governance);**7
and this cosmic Reason is identified in turn with the surrounding
medium or circumambient air (Stoic pneuma); while the alienating
darkness of sleep, alluded to in such suggestive terms by Heraclitus in
I, LXXXIX (D. 21) and XC (D. 26), is explained as a strictly mech-
anical process of separation from the cosmic Reason due to the
closing of our passages of perception in sleep. The result is a coherent
physical exegesis of Heraclitus’ doctrine of sleep, maintaining the
essential distinction between the private (or cognitively deprived)
and the common (and cognitively reliable) ranges of experience that
are so sharply contrasted in III (D. 2), where the text quoted by
Sextus is not entirely free from Stoic contamination,**? but remains
faithful in principle to Heraclitus’ thought. Sextus’ interpretation
also preserves, in its own way, a genuine Heraclitean sense of identity
between the logos of the human psyche and that of the universe as a
whole.
The physical identification of the ‘common logos’ with the circum-
ambient atmosphere or pneuma cannot be supported by any evidence
from the fragments: it is part of the hermeneutical rules of corre-
spondence by which the Stoics found their own truth in Heraclitus’
text. And this doctrine is also un-Heraclitean in its unambiguous pre-
cision: it states a psychophysical theory which happens to be false,
but which some ancients believed to be true. But it preserves no hint
of that poetic resonance and density that make Heraclitus’ own
statements on sleep profoundly meaningful for a modern reader, who
can no longer take seriously the ancient theory stated in the com-
mentary.
The commentator’s text has virtues of its own; and the image of
the dying embers brought back to radiance by contact with the fire
is one that we do not easily forget. In the quasi-mystic view of human
296 Appendix ПВ
intelligence as an alienated spark cut off from the divine Mind, there
is a kind of gnostic poetry that illumines this prosaic piece of anti-
quated physics. Such a reading of Heraclitus is worthy of Cleanthes,
or even Posidonius.
Historians of Hellenistic philosophy may determine how far our
text bears any trace of the personal style or doctrine of a particular
author. Regardless of its source, this ancient reading is of interest in
its own right, but without any authority for the modern interpretation
of Heraclitus.
Appendix ЇЇ:
Heraclitus and the Orient,
apropos ofa recent book by
M.L.West
Three out of the seven chapters in West's Early Greek Philosophy and
the Orient (Oxford, 1971) are devoted to Heraclitus. The question is,
as he says, a ‘perpetual’ one: proposed in antiquity by the forged
correspondence between Heraclitus and Darius, reopened early in the
nineteenth century by Schleiermacher and Creuzer, it is unlikely to
be closed soon. Scholarly fashions may come and go, but here there
is a genuine problem that will remain. In the case of Heraclitus more
clearly than for any other author of early Greece, we can find striking
textual parallels with the half-mythic, half-philosophic speculation of
ancient India and Iran. I take this much to have been established by
West and by the scholars who preceded him in this line of compara-
tive research.
Individual scholars may disagree on whether any particular item
belongs on the list of significant parallels. For example, I am not con-
vinced that the points of correspondence between the story of
Heraclitus’ death and the Persian purification rite that West describes
are ‘too striking to be fortuitous’ (West, p. 200); nor do I believe that
a Hellenistic story can be used as evidence for Persian influence in the
earlier period. On the other side of the ledger, West dismisses the
usual parallel to an Iranian judgment by fire (p. 170), because he fol-
lows Reinhardt in rejecting CXXI (D. 66) as inauthentic (p. 114, n. 1).
Since I accept the fragment in question, this point of similarity will
belong on my list but not on West's. However, I wish to avoid these
particular issues of controversy and simply take for granted some
minimal list of significant or intriguing parallels, beginning with the
central role of fire in the general world view and the verbal parallel
between the Heraclitean wise One (hen to sophon) and the Iranian
worship of the ‘Wise God’ (= Ahuramazda), and ending perhaps with
the juxtaposition of LXXXVIII (D. 96: ‘Corpses should be thrown
out quicker than dung’) and the Persian practice of exposing dead
bodies in lieu of burial (West, p. 184). Assuming some such list of
parallels, the question I want to discuss is: what do we make of
them?
298 Appendix III
West's thesis is explicitly *diffusionist'. For him, all such parallels
are to be evaluated from the point of view entitled ‘the gift of the
Magi’: where they are significant at all, they reflect the many ideas
which Greeks of the late sixth century borrowed from Eastern wis-
dom. I think there is here a methodological mistake in the posing of
the question. Of course the possibility of direct (or indirect) borrow-
ing cannot be ruled out; but there is no reason to assume that signifi-
cant parallels are to be regarded only, or even primarily, as evidence
for historical diffusion of ideas from one culture to anothei. I happen
to believe that West's thesis is correct in at least one case (namely the
Eastern, ultimately Indian origin of the doctrine of transmigration),
though the evidence is probably not clear enough to convince any-
one inclined to scepticism. And in another case — the contempt for
anthropomorphic cult and temple worship — the possibility of direct
influence is established by Herodotus’ report that this was a striking
peculiarity of Persian religion (1.131.1; West, p. 192). Even here,
however, we must raise the question: what do we mean by influence?
It would be strange indeed to suppose that Xenophanes and Herac-
litus despised the worship of cult images because they found out that
the Persians despised it. It would be much less strange to suggest that
their own critical reflection on the implications of idolatry was some-
how stimulated or encouraged by the shock of contact with a religion
from which such a cult was conspicuously absent. (We may then
come to see Herodotus' remark about Persian belief in non-
anthropomorphic gods as an expression of Greek thought, presuppos-
ing and prolonging the critical reaction of men like Xenophanes and
Heraclitus. For of course Herodotus does not present us with a naive
or culture-free report on Persian religion, a neutral description that
could antedate the reaction of that earlier generation which en-
countered the Persians for the first time. On the contrary, Herodotus'
own view of the Persians is conditioned by that earlier reaction.)
In other cases the diffusionist hypothesis must stand on very shaky
ground, since even the possibility of historical contact is not easy to
conceive. In West's collection of parallels, perhaps none is more
striking than the echo of XC (D. 26) in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad:
‘When both sun and moon have set . . . what is the light of man then?
The self becomes his light then . . . For, having fallen asleep, he
transcends this world, — the forms of death' (West, p. 183). The
parallel is genuine; but how can we understand it in terms of influ-
ence or borrowing? Are we to imagine Heraclitus somehow able to
procure and read the Sanscrit text, written perhaps a century or more
Heraclitus and the Orient 299
before his time? Or that some obliging multilingual Magus gave him a
literal rendering into Greek? For what is striking here is not only the
general conception but the specific imagery: the self or soul asa
man's light in the night; the dream experience as a link between the
world of the living and the other world of the dead. I find it neither
possible nor necessary to believe that Heraclitus! words were inspired
by some intermediate text in which these thoughts from the oldest
Upanishad were transmitted to the Greeks. It is far more plausible to
suppose that, just as in the case of the parallel cited from Proust in
note 287, we have an example of thinkers very remote from one
another in time and place who are sufficiently akin in turn of mind
or speculative temperament to give expression to similar thoughts in
similar language.
This example illustrates what is most valuable and most defective
in the comparative method as practised by West and many of his
predecessors. What is valuable is the reminder that a Greek thinker
like Heraclitus may have more in common with an early Indian mystic
like Yajnavalkya (and also, I have suggested, with a seventeenth-
century metaphysician like Spinoza) than with the philosophers of
his own time and place. The minimal and by no means negligible
benefit of the comparative approach is to free us from a narrow his-
toricism that is easily generated by the techniques of traditional phil-
ology. But the accompanying defect is the unspoken and uncriticized
assumption that wherever such resemblances are documented, they
are to be regarded as prima facie evidence of historical contact. For
this assumption stultifies the comparative enterprise by enlisting its
results in advance under the banner of a new and more implausible
form of historicism.
If the comparative method in these areas tends to provoke such
strong resistance (and even West seems to display an allergic reaction
to the work of Georges Dumézil, probably the greatest comparativist
of our time), that is not simply because the specialist feels uncomfort-
able when confronted by texts he cannot control. It is also because
those who make use of the comparative method do not always have
a clear view of what they are doing. To assume that we must seek for
an historical ‘explanation’ whenever important resemblances are
found between the Upanishads or the Avesta and certain ideas of
Heraclitus or Parmenides — and also between the Egyptian notion of
ma at and the Indo-Iranian conception of rta-aša (West, pp. 177—9)
— is not only to prejudice the inquiry unnecessarily. It also tends to
produce historical fiction, as in West’s concluding hypothesis of the
300 = Appendix III
stimulating flow of Magi refugees westward to Ionia after Cyrus' con-
quest of Media (pp. 240f.). To call this historical fiction is not to say
that we know such creative stimulus from the Magi did not take
place, but only that we have no good reason to believe that it did.
In general, the straight historical use of the comparative method
tends to trivialize interesting comparisons by reducing them to points
of evidence for a weak саѕе.449 Even if this particular historical thesis
were correct, it would raise more questions than it answers. Why were
Greek thinkers impressed by such Oriental wisdom, and how did they
transform it? But we could begin to give useful answers to these ques-
tions only if we had a clear picture of just what kind of material was
available to the Ionians — if we knew, for example, what kind of
‘theogony’ the Magi sang at a Persian sacrifice (according to Hdt.
1.132.3), and what they told their Greek interlocutors about it. But
this we do not and probably cannot know. Hence the comparisons
are likely to prove more enlightening if we leave aside all thought of
historical contacts, and consider what other ways there are of
accounting for resemblances of the sort cited by West. I will conclude
by mentioning four or five other applications of the comparative
method, each one of which might shed some light on the thought
and language of Heraclitus.
First of all, a striking parallel between speculative thought in two
different cultures may reflect something like a human ‘universal’. For
the purpose of intellectual and textual comparisons of the sort we
are considering, such cultural universals can be distinguished into two
kinds. The first kind I will call a conceptual universal, like the innate
ideas posited in some recent theories of linguistic universals. These
will represent very general traits of language and rationality. Perhaps
the clearest example is the contrast between Yes and No, affirmation
and negation, with the associated fact that many concepts tend to
come in pairs of opposites, like night and day, wet and dry, good and
evil. Heraclitus’ doctrine of opposites can thus be seen as one specific
articulation of a general feature of rational discourse. We should
expect to find parallels everywhere, from China to Africa and from
Australia to pre-Columbian America.
A second type of universal seems to depend less upon language as
such than upon fundamental features of the human condition and
the order of nature. (Some of Heraclitus’ opposites will fall under
this heading, for example male and female, life and death, sleeping
and waking. The distinction between natural and linguistic universals
is not always easy to draw — e.g. for night and day, summer and win-
Heraclitus and the Orient 301
ter. I propose this merely as a convenient device for listing data whose
full discussion would raise major philosophical problems.) Thus the
importance of fire in human life and the role of the sun as a repre-
sentative of the order of nature (both daily and annually) are items
that may impress themselves upon reflective minds in any cultural
tradition. So again we should expect to find some parallel to Herac-
litus’ conception of fire and sun almost anywhere we look.
A third type of parallel which is less universal and more distinctly
culture-bound will depend upon the possession of similar social or
religious institutions, regardless of whether or not these have a com-
mon origin. Many cultures make use of fire for burnt-offerings to the
gods (or to the Lord God), keep sacred fires always lit, or regularly
light fires according to certain prescribed forms. In any culture where
the role of fire is thus ritually developed, Heraclitus’ reference to the
everliving fire of the cosmos and his association of fire with justice
will have a rich and specific resonance that is lacking in a society
without a fire cult.
A special case of the cultural affinity just mentioned is the situ-
ation where institutional or conceptual similarities reflect the inherit-
ance from a common past, so that the parallels are true cognates of
one another. Thus the ritual and mythic role of fire in Iran, India,
and Greece may present features derived from a common Indo-
European origin. A more obvious example of cognate parallels is
provided by the Indo-European verb ‘to be’ (*es-), with a present
participle meaning ‘real’ or ‘true’. This linguistic kinship between
Greek and Sanscrit partially explains (since it makes possible) the
parallel developments of the concepts of Being and Not-Being in
Parmenides and the Upanishads (West, p. 224).
Last of all, I would include parallels that rest upon resemblances
between individuals rather than between cultures: an affinity of
spiritual or intellectual temperament of the sort I have suggested
between Heraclitus and Yajnavalkya and between Heraclitus and
Spinoza. (And one might glance here at stylistic parallels between
the aphorisms of Heraclitus and those of Nietzsche or Wittgenstein.)
‘Heraclitus strikes a prophetic note that has reminded more than one
reader of Zoroaster’ (West, p. 193), as other readers have compared
Hesiod to an Old Testament prophet. If such comparisons are soundly
based and carefully formulated, they may provide us with a typology
of moral and intellectual temperaments, the counterpart for intellec-
tual history to the character- or personality-types of psychological
theory. Such individual typologies might (or might not) show interest-
302 Appendix ПІ
ing correlations with social typologies of the sort defined by Max
Weber. What they would in any event have in common with Weber's
‘ideal types’ is the theoretical abstraction from any historical con-
nection: thus when we compare feudalism in Japan with the feudal-
ism of medieval Europe we do not even consider the question whether
one is derived from the other.
In some cases it may turn out that a resemblance of type is accom-
panied by an historical link. If I am correct in recognizing a likeness
of kind between the thought of Heraclitus and that of Spinoza, this
typological affinity does not exclude the possibility of an actual his-
torical link, via the Stoics. But in this case it is the resemblance of
type that helps us to understand the historical connection, and not
the other way round.
Notes
Both synchronism and acme are given by Suidas (DK 22.A1a); acme alone
by D.L. IX.1 (ibid. A1). The acme or floruit dates reflect the artificially
precise report of a prose excerpt from Apollodorus' Chronika (in verse). I
see no reason to saddle Apollodorus himself with such arbitrary simplifi-
cations, as many scholars do. He probably referred more vaguely, but
soundly, to the reign of Darius (just as he apparently dated Anaximenes
by reference to Cyrus, and the long-lived Xenophanes by both kings,
Cyrus and Darius). The Apollodorean date is echoed, rather than con-
firmed, by the forged correspondence between Heraclitus and Darius. It
may originally have been based upon an intelligent reading of XVIII (D.
40).
Or 470, if one takes the latest possible date for Xenophanes' death. Heca-
taeus lived until 494, at least. It is tempting to explain the dyadic structure
of XVIII (‘Hesiod and Pythagoras, and likewise Xenophanes and Heca-
taeus’) by the assumption that Pythagoras (like Hesiod) was dead when
Heraclitus wrote, Xenophanes and Hecataeus still alive. Even so, we would
not have a precise date, but a more narrowly limited period, perhaps 505—
490 B.C. Cf. Marcovich, PW 249, who assigns the book to a date ‘around
490 B.C.’. For other evidence pointing towards this date, see comment on
LXIV.
D.L. IX.6.
Ibid. Ancient temples were regularly used for storing treasure, and were
open to private individuals only under exceptional circumstances. There
are parallels to the depositing of a book which make the story plausible in
Heraclitus’ case.
‘The Artemesium must have been incomparably the most opulent Greek
temple of its time’, A.W. Lawrence, Greek Architecture (Pelican History of
Art, 1957), p. 136.
John Boardman, The Greeks Overseas (Penguin, 2nd edition, London,
1973), p. 96.
One late ‘quotation’ has him saying: ‘May your wealth never fail you, men
of Ephesus, so that your wretchedness may be fully exposed' (D. 125a:
see Appendix I). Although this is pretty clearly not a genuine quotation,
the spirit is that of XCVII (D. 29), where ‘the many’ who ‘sate themselves
like cattle’ must in fact be the rich. Heraclitus’ repeated references to
satiety (koros) recall the words of Solon: ‘satiety begets crime (Aybris),
when great wealth falls to men whose understanding is not straight’
(fr. 5.9).
Compare LXVI (D. 33) with LXIII (D. 49). Heraclitus must have in mind
an exceptional statesman like Solon of Athens, Bias of Priene, or (in his
view) Hermodorus of Ephesus. His insistence upon the rule of law would
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Notes to pages 3—9
exclude any approval of tyranny, which for the Greeks meant illegal
monarchy. Compare the report in Clement (DK 22.A 3) that Heraclitus
persuaded a certain tyrant Melankomas to give up his unconstitutional
rule.
H. Diels, Herakleitos? , p. vi.
D.L. IX.6. One group of these early Heracliteans seems to have developed
a full-scale physical system, from which a few details are preserved in the
Aristotelian Problemata. See below, n. 372.
See commentary on CV (D. 85), and compare Democritus fr. 64 with
XVIII (D. 40), 158 with XLVIIIA (D. 6), etc.
De Victu 1.5—24, printed as DK 22.C 1. The early (i.e. pre-Platonic) date
of the De Victu, for which I argued in Anaximander (p. 189, n. 2), is con-
firmed by R. Joly, Recherches sur le traité pseudo-hippocratique 'Du
Régime’ (Paris, 1960), p. 209; but some scholars (e.g. West, p. 122) still
assign the treatise to the mid-fourth century. This would testify to an even
more continuous stylistic influence of Heraclitus, as in the much later
Hellenistic *Hippocratic' treatise De Nutrimento (DK 22.C 2).
D.L. П.22; compare IX.12. For Socrates’ response see p. 95.
See DK 22.C 4 for the most Heraclitean section of Cleanthes' Hymn, and
comment on CXIII (D. 12) for a possible citation from his commentary.
Deichgraber (pp. 28—30) has made a good case for assigning to Cleanthes
the epigram on Heraclitus quoted on p. 95. I would not be surprised if
the passage on sleep from Sextus Empiricus (see Appendix IIB) repre-
sented the commentary of Cleanthes.
At least one of these authors is earlier than Cleanthes: Heraclides Ponticus,
a contemporary of Aristotle and associate of Plato.
See DK 22.C 5. Lucian represents Heraclitus as the weeping philosopher in
contrast to the laughing Democritus, in a tradition that goes back at least
as far as Seneca and is represented in Montaigne's essay ‘On Democritus
and Heraclitus'. Lucian is also said to have composed a deliberately non-
sensical version of Heraclitus’ text which he submitted to an unwitting
philosopher of renown, who obligingly responded with a profound com-
mentary. (The story is told by Galen, cited from an Arabic translation by
Deichgráber, p. 29, n. 25.)
So rightly Deichgraber, p. 20; similarly West, p. 112.
I. Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii reliquiae. In his 1967 edition M. Marcovich
again arranged the fragments in topical sections; but the 1972 edition by
Bollack and Wismann retains the order of Diels.
See the citation on p. 21, with n. 45.
I here repeat the view expressed in *A new look at Heraclitus', p. 190.
Since all the evidence is indirect, it may be an exaggeration to ascribe so
much artistry to the original composition; but I believe it is an exaggeration
in the right direction.
So likewise West, p. 113n, following Walzer.
Any modern arrangement must operate with a serious handicap, since we
do not know how much of Heraclitus’ book has been lost. For an attempt
to calculate the original dimensions of the work, and some interesting
parallels to the order proposed here, see H. Gomperz, ‘Ueber die ursprüng-
liche Reihenfolge einiger Bruchstücke Heraklits’, Hermes 58 (1923), 20ff.
Gomperz estimates that nearly half of the book has been preserved in
quotation or close paraphrase.
Reinhardt, Parmenides, p. 219.
D.L. IX.5. What the words imply is that, for the ancient commentator
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27
28
29
30
31
32
38
34
35
36
Notes to pages 10—15 305
whose view is cited, ‘the work fell naturally into these three parts’ (so
Burnet, quoted and corrected by West, p. 112). Deichgráber (pp. 18—20),
followed by Kirk and Marcovich, connects this tripartition with Stoic
divisions of philosophy. But there is no Stoic classification in which
politics (or ethics) could be sandwiched in between physics and theology.
And politikos logos must be taken here in its broader Aristotelian sense,
to include moral philosophy as a whole.
He attacks indiscriminately both the poets who were generally accepted
as the teachers of Greece — Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus — and the new
wise men of the scientific tradition: Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Heca-
taeus of Miletus. In his contemptuous reference to empty learning he
names Hesiod in the same breath with the latter three (XVIII, D. 40).
Compare Hesiod, whose Muses proudly insist upon their power to tell
‘many falsehoods like unto truth’ (Theogony 27). And Pindar, one of the
most conservative fifth-century spokesmen for the older moral view, can
reject a well-known story about gods tasting human flesh, on the grounds
of piety alone (Olympian 1.52).
To this extent I fully agree with the conclusions of Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The
Justice of Zeus (Oxford, 1971), ch. II, though I think he underestimates
the intellectual distance between this moralizing view and the tragically
amoral outlook expressed by Achilles at the end of the Jliad, that Zeus
distributes good and evil to men as he pleases (Il. XXIV.525—393; cf.
Lloyd-Jones, p. 27).
See my Anaximander, esp. pp. 238ff., for the connections between the
Milesian view of the cosmos and the new conception of deity as a cosmic
god.
The extreme point of Homeric egoism is reached in the momentary wish
of Achilles that ali the Achaeans and Trojans might perish, while he and
Patroclus should alone return victorious from Troy (Л. XV1.97—100). The
qualification 'and Patroclus' is absolutely crucial, as the sequel shows.
See A.W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: a Study in Greek Values
(Oxford, 1960).
See Helen North, Sophrosyne, pp. 10f. and passim.
Compare the first naive attempt to define soóphrosyné in Plato’s Charmides:
to walk and talk in a quiet, decent manner, and in general to act with
*quietness' or restraint (159B).
For the question when sóphrosyné was first explicitly recognized as areté
or ‘excellence’, the crucial text is Heraclitus XXXII (D. 112). Although in
later usage, for example in the Platonic dialogues, sóphrosyné is regularly
counted as one of the canonical virtues for which areté stands as the
genus, the two terms were originally contrasted with one another. See the
funeral inscriptions cited below, in n. 95.
The best-known discussion is that of E.R. Dodds, ‘From shame-culture to
guilt-culture’ in The Greeks and the Irrational. Cf. Adkins, Merit and
Responsibility, p. 76, for a somewhat different account.
Ido not mean to deny that changes took place in the moral ideals of
Greece during the archaic period; what I doubt is that the Homeric poems
can serve as a reliable historical document for the psychology or sociology
of any definite period or stage of culture.
Laws IV, 714A. (This prefigures the fuller definition of law by St Thomas:
‘an ordering of reason for the common good’.) I do not doubt that Plato,
who was a careful reader of Heraclitus, is here consciously echoing XXX
(D. 114), as again in Laws XII, 957C. The word play is even more natural
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Notes to pages 17—21 and 89—92
for Heraclitus, since in his dialect noos and nomos differ by a single letter.
For the philosophical implications of the play on хуп nói, tõi хупбі and
tói nomói, see comment on XXX. Heraclitus has, in effect, anticipated Aris-
totle's remark (Politics I.2) that man is the most social (literally, ‘political’)
of animals because of his possession of logos as the capacity for rational
communication.
See XLVII—XLVIII (D. 3 and 6). As Diels observed, ‘die Naturwissenschaft
verdankt ihm nichts’ (Herakleitos2, p. ix).
Indicative in this respect, though surely apocryphal, is Aristotle's tale
about how Thales made a fortune by forecasting a heavy olive harvest
(Politics 1.11 = DK 11.A 10).
For the borrowing from Babylon see Hdt. 11.109; the contribution of
Anaximander is mentioned by D.L. II.1 (DK 12.A 1), Suidas (12.A 2) and
Eusebius (12.A 4). For a general defense of this tradition see ‘On early
Greek astronomy’, JHS 90 (1970), 99—116.
See DK II.B 1—2 and the use of the Big Dipper in navigation, ascribed to
Thales by Callimachus (DK 11.A 3a). Again, what is of interest is not the
historicity of the ascriptions but the general sense for the practical bent of
early natural philosophy. Anaximander's map of the earth, which is better
attested, points in the same direction.
Cf. Xenophanes A 33, 5—6; and Anaximander, p. 185.
Among the early cosmologists the atomists (and their later followers, the
Epicureans) seem to have been alone in developing the conception of an
organized physical cosmos without the correlative concept of a divine
organizing principle.
See DK 13.A 7, 2—3.
Similarly ‘it scatters and again gathers; it forms and dissolves, and ap-
proaches and departs’ in LI (D. 91) suggests the condensation-rarefaction
cycle of Anaximenes’ air. Some such text in Heraclitus may have served as
the basis for Theophrastus’ claim that he, like Anaximenes, produced all
things from the first principle ‘by thickening and rarefaction’.
Theophrastus cited in D.L. IX.6.
Cited in D.L. IX.15.
Diels, Herakleitos (1st ed.), p. vii.
It may be no accident that Heraclitus has himself expressed the formal
structure of these two principles: ‘out of all things one, and out of one
thing all' (CXXIV, D. 10).
A. Lebeck, The Oresteia, pp. 1f.
Compare, for example, William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, first
published in 1930, with the remarks on ambiguity in Roman Ingarden,
The Literary Work of Art (pp. 142—4 and 253—4 in English tr. by G.G.
Grabowicz, Evanston, 1973), original ed. 1931.
See in particular Anne Lebeck, The Oresteia, p. 3: ‘It should be a basic
principle in interpreting Aeschylus that when language and syntax are
most difficult, the poet has compressed the greatest number of meanings
into the smallest possible space. Pursuing the customary methods of
classical scholarship one is sometimes tempted to treat ambiguity as if the
author were at fault, as if the clarity of normal diction were beyond his
grasp. Yet that ambiguity characteristic of Aeschylus is not easy to
achieve; it comes about neither by accident nor inability but by design."
I suggest the same is true a fortiori of Heraclitus.
Readings may differ in other ways, for example by an ambiguous refer-
ence, as in the question whether the lion cub at Agamemnon 717ff. is
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57
58
59
60
Notes to pages 92—101 307
taken as allusion to Helen or to Clytemnestra. I am not sure that examples
of this type of ambiguity are to be found in Heraclitus. Linguistic density
in the fragments is often a function of allusion to earlier texts, as in the
Homeric and Archilochean references of polemos xynos ‘war is shared’ in
LXXXII (D. 80) (see commentary); but perhaps all such cases can be
analysed in terms of different senses for a given word, in this case xynos.
Some of the Hippocratic treatises may be contemporary with Herodotus,
or only slightly later. But the dating is controversial, the texts often un-
satisfactory, and there is no systematic means of surveying the Hippocratic
data at all comparable to Powell's Lexicon.
For the Homeric (and occasionally post-Homeric) use of the verb einai in
the sense of ‘be alive’, see my The Verb ‘Be’ in Ancient Greek, рр. 241—3.
For examples in Herodotus, see The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek, pp. 352ff.;
for the application to our fragment, ibid. p. 354, n. 26. This reading was
anticipated by Burnet (p. 133, n. 1); recently accepted by West, pp. 115f.
and E. Hussey, The Presocratics, p. 89.
I mention for courtesy's sake two other readings presented in the scholarly
literature. Both involve punctuating before aiei, but the first keeps the
construal of ‘is’ as copula by taking the demonstrative pronoun hode as
predicate: ‘the logos is this one, is as follows’. (So, after Kranz and others,
Kirk, p. 33: ‘the Logos which is as I describe it’; Bollack-Wismann, p. 59:
‘du discours qui est celui-la’; also accepted as possible by Guthrie, I. 425n.)
The second reading takes ‘is’ as independent verb but gives it a stronger
existential rather than strictly veridical sense: ‘this logos is real’ or ‘it really
exists’. This may be what is intended by Snell’s translation: ‘diese Lehre
hier, ihren Sinn, der Wirklichkeit hat’; but there is a natural tendency to
slide from the sense of existence to that of truth. So also in Marcovich’s
rendering: ‘this Truth, real as it is’. Cf. Fränkel (Dichtung und Philosophie2,
p. 423): ‘Diesem Logos . . . der in Ewigkeit gilt.’
D.L. IX.16. The epigram is plausibly assigned to Cleanthes by Deichgraber,
p. 30.
Compare the fifth-century proems of Herodotus and Thucydides. Long
before Hecataeus, Hesiod introduced his Theogony with a similar contrast:
‘This word (tonde mython) did the Muses speak to me first of all... “we
know how to tell many lies resembling truth; and we know, when we want,
to utter what is true”’.’ (Theogony 24ff., cited as a precedent for Hecataeus
by F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker I (Berlin, 1923),
p. 319.)
The treatise of Alcmaeon (a western Dorian writing in the tradition of
Ionian science, probably in the early fifth century) begins: ‘Alcmaeon of
Croton, son of Peirithous, said as follows' (DK 24.B 1). Since Alcmaeon,
like Hecataeus (and Hesiod in the Theogony), begins with a mention of
his own name in the third person, Diels suggested that Ion's work too
might have begun ‘Ion of Chios says the following (tade)'. A number of
scholars (including Diels) have supposed that Heraclitus' fragment I was
also preceded by such a signature or ‘seal’: ‘Heraclitus of Ephesus says the
following (tade)'. But for such a personal signature there is really no evi-
dence (unless one relies heavily on the initial particle de, attested only in
Hippolytus). The demonstrative pronoun traditional in such proems occurs
at the beginning of our preserved text, and again in the second sentence:
ho logos hode ‘this account’.
I follow Bywater and Bollack-Wismann in excluding the words that pre-
cede III, ‘therefore one should follow the common’, as an interpretative
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64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
78
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Notes to pages 101—110
paraphrase added by Sextus. (So likewise West, pp. 118f.) The interpret-
ation is not incorrect; but the tone of moral exhortation and the explicit
statement of what is about to be conveyed implicitly are quite uncharacter-
istic of Heraclitus' own style.
See Powell's Lexicon under koinos, esp. sense 2, where koinoi logói
appears as an equivalent to koinéi gnoméi (chrasthai), ‘to make common
cause’, ‘adopt a common policy’.
This latent value of xynos in III as a signal for noos ‘understanding’ would
be guaranteed if Marcovich (and others) were right in supposing that III
follows upon XXX (D. 114). What would in that case be an echo of an
earlier thought becomes in my arrangement an example of the proleptic
hint of things to come.
Cf. Kirk and Raven, p. 188.
It is only with the Stoics that logos comes to be regularly used as an equiv-
alent of nous, the faculty of ‘reason’ as a power of the human soul. Even
in Aristotle this notion is ordinarily expressed by derivative terms such as
to logikon (meros tés psychés) the rational (or calculating) part of the
soul, or by the phrase to logon echon: the rational faculty is not logos
itself but ‘what has (is characterized by) Jogos’. Thus in Aristotle's ter-
minology logos remains the principle of rationality (argument, calculation)
immanent in thought and speech.
See H. Frankel, ‘Ephémeros als Kennwort für die menschliche Natur’, in
Wege und Formen (3rd ed.), pp. 23—39, with an accurate assessment of
our fragment there, p. 31, n. 6. Compare his Dichtung und Philosophie
(2nd ed.), p. 424.
The thought is proverbial, even formulaic, in its earliest occurrences: cf.
Il. XV11.32. The familiar jingle mathos-pathos (ог mathein-pathein) is not
attested before Aeschylus and Herodotus, but something like it is pre-
supposed by Heraclitus’ phrase mathontes ginóskousin.
Archilochus fr. 67a, verse 7: ‘recognize (gigndske) what a see-saw pattern of
change (rhysmos) holds men in its power'.
Thus I concur in the conclusion of Kirk and Bollack-Wismann, though not
in all of their arguments.
For the early Ionic use of philosophein see Herodotus 1.30.2: Solon goes
travelling in order to learn more than most men know. It is true that the
expression philosophoi andres might have been added by Clement: see
Marcovich, p. 27; Wiese, p. 259, with note 3; Reinhardt in Wiese, pp. 317f.
Reinhardt wanted to take histores as ‘eyewitness’; he pointed to the juri-
dical parallel between histores here and martyres ‘witnesses’ in XV (D.
1012).
Wiese, followed by Marcovich, would construe eu mala with chré, thus
giving the sense: *A man who loves wisdom [or, *who wants to be wise']
really must be a judge [or ‘eyewitness’] of many things.’
Such is the usual rendering of the text. In my own translation (‘listen like
children to their parents’) I have followed a suggestion of West, p. 127.
See my article ‘On early Greek astronomy’.
As Reinhardt saw long ago: ‘Der Tag ist eine erleuchtete Nacht, die Nacht
ein verfinsterter Tag’ (Parmenides, p. 182 commenting on D. 99; cf. Kirk,
p. 165).
For the rejection of XX as a distinct fragment see Kirk, pp. 157 —61; for
its defense see Marcovich, pp. 320f. and Bollack-Wismann, pp. 299—301.
Seneca, who renders the phrase as *one day is equal to all' (unus dies par
omni est), offers as the first of several interpretations one that coincides
in effect with our explanation of XIX: ‘if a day is the time of twenty-four
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80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
Notes to pages 111—118 309
hours, all days are necessarily equal to one another, because the night
possesses what the day has lost’ (Epistles 12.7, in Marcovich, p. 319).
For detailed discussion, see E.N. Roussos, ‘Archilochos kai Erakleitos’,
Philosophia, Yearbook of the Research Center for Greek Philosophy at
the Academy of Athens, 1975—76, pp. 103—32 (German summary, pp.
128—30).
See the juxtaposition of different versions (pp. 164f.) in G.S. Kirk, ‘The
Michigan Alcidamas-Papyrus; Heraclitus fr. 56 D; The riddle of the lice’,
Classical Quarterly 44 (1950), 149ff.
As Kirk points out, loc. cit. p. 159. Cf. LVII-LVIII, where human wisdom
is assimilated to that of a child; also the contrast between men and boys in
LXIV (D. 121) and CVI (D. 117).
Here I agree with Marcovich, p. 342, and Bollack-Wismann, p. 298.
Edward Hussey writes me that, although he accepts XXV as authentic, he
regards the phrase *choosing what he liked from these compositions' as
indefensible in the Greek, because of the unusual construction of eklego-
menos, which would normally mean ‘selecting these treatises (from some
larger set)’. I believe with Reinhardt (Parmenides, p. 235 n.) that this
anomaly is the sign of an archaic style rather than a forgery.
For a recent attempt at reconstruction, see West, ch. 1. For the stories
connecting Pythagoras with him, see Kirk and Raven, pp. 50—2.
Not in prose, but suggesting a technical tradition, was the ‘Nautical
Astronomy' ascribed to Thales (or to Phocus of Samos), and a similar
hexameter work assigned to Cleostratus of Tenedos (DK 6 and 11.B 1—2).
Vitruvius (VII, Preface 12) mentions two important sixth-century descrip-
tions of archaic temples recorded by the architects: an account of the
Samian Heraion by Theodorus of Samos, and one of the Artemesium in
Ephesus by Chersiphron and Metagenes. These astronomical and archi-
tectural manuals, together with the treatises of the Milesians, give some
idea of the sixth-century technical literature to which Heraclitus must be
referring.
See the quotation from Timaeus in DK (D. 81) and Marcovich 18b, p. 71.
The last clause can also be construed: ‘to recognize that the wise is set
apart from all’; but this does not represent a significant conceptual differ-
ence.
Some interpreters have tried to give a less paradoxical reading to these two
words, at the price of ignoring their natural sense. There is nothing in
Herodotus to suggest that edizésamén could bear the much tamer meaning
‘I asked myself questions’. Nor is there any evidence that the verb means
*to consult an oracle'. In the one case in Herodotus (VII.142) where the
verb takes ‘oracle’ (manteion) as its object, the sense is not ‘to consult
(the oracle)’ — that has already been done — but ‘to investigate it’, ‘to
search out (its meaning)’. (So Guthrie, I, 418.)
Cf. Plato, Charmides 164E7; Helen North, Sophrosyne, pp. 10ff.; Wilam-
owitz, 'Erkenne dich selbst’, in Reden und Vorträge II (Berlin, 1913), p.
173.
See Marcovich, p. 96, and further discussion on XXXII.
Or even ‘for all (human) laws’, with nomois understood (so Marcovich). As
far as the human-cosmic duality is concerned, this reading falls on the
human side and is thus roughly equivalent to ‘for all men’,
For the triple word play on noos-xynos-nomos see the Platonic echoes
cited above, n. 36); and compare the echo in Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus
24f. quoted by Marcovich, p. 89.
Compare Semonides of Amorgus, fr. 1.1—2 Diehl: ‘Zeus controls the
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91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
Notes to pages 120—125
accomplishment of all there is, and disposes it as he wishes’ (hokéi thelei:
cf. hokoson ethelei in XXX).
The doubts go back as far as Schleiermacher; they were recently general-
ized by Kirk (p. 56), who describes all three citations as *weak paraphrases'.
Similarly Marcovich (pp. 89f., 563; cf. pp. 96f.).
Pp. 129 and 257 of Hense's edition of Stobaeus, Vol. I = Wachsmuth-
Hense Vol. III. For the general character of Stobaeus’ work see Hense's
article in PW IX, 2549ff.
This does not apply to CI (D. 115), which is not ascribed to Heraclitus by
Stobaeus (but only by modern editors), and hence need not have been
taken from the same source as those preceding (D. 108—14).
Saying something about the virtue in question does not mean using the
abstract noun sóphrosyné. The fact that XXIX and XXXII, like Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Herodotus, employ the verb sophronein but not the noun
tells in favor of their authenticity.
It is natural, though not inevitable, to take megisté with the following
sophié as well as with the preceding areté. Note that the form sophié
occurs in the verbatim fragments only here, and in XXV (D. 129), where
Heraclitus is speaking of human excellence. When the neuter form sophon
occurs, there is generally some human-cosmic ambivalence.
See North, Sophrosyne, p. 13, n. 47: the formula is found in the epitaph
for Protomachus ascribed to Simonides (fr. 128.4 Diehl) and in four
sixth-century inscriptions (P. Friedlander, Epigrammata, nos. 6, 31, 71,
85 (= IG I2, 988, 974, 986, 972)). These early parallels should suffice to
answer the charge (Kirk, p. 390, following Heidel) that the first three
words of the fragment 'can safely be rejected as a banal paraphrase in the
language of late fifth-century ethical investigations’.
Here again it is natural, though not inevitable, to construe aléthes as direct
object of both infinitives.
Note repetition of ‘and’ (kai); cf. the two-fold pattern of heroic excellence
described in the Introduction, p. 12 above.
Reinhardt (Parmenides, p. 223, n. 1, followed by Kirk, p. 391), rendered
it thus: *das Wahre sagen und tun (durch Tat und Wort der Wahrheit
dienen) in richtiger Erkenntnis'. Marcovich (p. 96) complained, with some
reason, that ‘aléthes poiein does not seem to make good sense’.
See LSJ s.v. alétheia 1.2.
For this value of alétheia, see The Verb ‘Be’in Ancient Greek, pp. 364f.
Apology 21B3. See U. Hólscher, Anfüngliches Fragen, pp. 136—41.
For the latter interpretation, see Sneli, ‘Die Sprache Heraklits’, in Gesam-
melte Schriften (1966), pp. 144f.
Cf. Hólscher: ‘Die Dunkelheit der Gleichnissprache . . . entspricht dem
Ratselcharakter des zu Sagenden . . . Paradox ist seine Rede, weil seine
Wahrheit paradox ist’ (Anfangliches Fragen, p. 141).
This was correctly seen by Schleiermacher, p. 14. Compare E. Rohde,
Psyche (Engl. tr. W.B. Hillis, London, 1925), p. 316, n. 64; 4th German
ed. (Tübingen, 1907), II, 69, n. 1. The Sibyl was sometimes dated in the
eighth, sometimes in the sixth century B.C. Only in the later tradition is
her birth put back much earlier, centuries before the Trojan War. From
this, together with the original dating, arose the view that the Sibyl must
have lived a thousand years (and hence wanted to die)! (See Rohde (Engl.
tr.) pp. 315f., n. 61 and Rzach, PW 2nd series, II, 2078f.) What Plutarch
gives here is a spiritualized version of the Sibyl’s long life.
Kirk and Raven, p. 212, n. 1; Marcovich, p. 405; and Bollack-Wismann,
pp. 270—2.
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
Notes to pages 125—129 311
See Rohde, Psyche (English tr.), p. 293.
For the former view, see A. Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination
dans l'antiquité П (Paris, 1880), 136ff., followed by Rzach, PW 2nd
series, II (1923), 2075, and by A.S. Pease in the Oxford Classical Diction-
ary s.v. ‘Sibylla’. The latter view is that of Rohde, Psyche (Engl. tr.), p.
292 with n. 58 (on p. 314).
See Pausanias X.12.1 and Parke and Wormell, The Delphic Oracle I
(Oxford, 1956), p. 13.
Thus Guthrie, p. 414; Kirk and Raven, p. 212 n; Hólscher, Anfüngliches
Fragen p. 143; and my remarks in ‘A new look at Heraclitus’, p. 193
column 2.
*Lob der Sibylle bei Heraklit sehr unwahrscheinlich', Reinhardt, *Nachlass'
86, in Wiese, p. 317.
Parmenides p. 201. Similarly Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes (3rd ed.),
p. 36. For the historical background, see Snell, ch. IV, esp. pp. 103ff.,
116f.
The culprit here is Burnet, whose paper ‘The Socratic doctrine of the soul’,
in the Proceedings of the British Academy VII (1915—16), 235—59, isa
brilliant piece of special pleading for the thesis that before Socrates ‘the
psyché is never regarded as having anything to do with clear perception or
knowledge, or even with articulate emotion’ (p. 254), a thesis which can
scarcely convince anyone who reads without bias the texts that Burnet
himself cites. (He does not cite Heraclitus.) Dodds has served as unwitting
accomplice by relying upon Burnet in his own discussion of the fifth-
century conception of psyché. When Dodds writes (The Greeks and the
Irrational, p. 139) that ‘the psyche is spoken of as the seat of courage, of
passion, of pity, of anxiety, of animal appetite, but before Plato seldom if
ever as the seat of reason; its range is broadly that of the Homeric thumos’,
we can agree ‘broadly’ but must take exception to the phrase ‘seldom if
ever’. In Antiphon 4.1.7 a soul that can deliberate (bouleusasa) looks
rational; and at Antigone 227 the Watchman's psyché is precisely giving
him good advice, participating in deliberation. So there is no reason to set
apart as special exceptions Philoctetes 55, which (as Burnet handsomely
admitted, p. 256), ‘seems to imply that it [viz. the psyché] is the seat of
knowledge’, and Philoctetes 1013 which implies ‘that it is the seat of
character’ (Burnet), Compare Jebb’s note to Antigone 176.
This view of the psyche is as old as Anaximenes and, in a sense, as old as
Homer, for whom the psyche is the breath of life which a man 'expires'.
It was one of the merits of Burnet's article (cited in preceding note)
to point out that the ‘prevailing notion in the time of Socrates was that
the souls of the dead were absorbed by the upper air, just as their bodies
were by the earth’ (ibid. p. 248), citing Eur. Supplices 533 (the pneuma
goes to the aithér as the body to the earth) and the Potidea inscription of
432 B.C.: ‘the aithér received their psychai; the earth their bodies’.
Or, keeping the MS form with Bollack-Wismann: ‘one will not find them
out, even if one travels...’.
It has also been suggested that we think of some physiological process
involving the soul’s movements within the body: either its capacity to
‘move to all parts of the body at need’; or the fact that its ‘bonds’ or
‘limits’ (peirata) are in the blood, on the assumption that the psyche is an
exhalation from the internal fluids of the body. The first view is that of
Kirk and Raven, relying upon the more-than-dubious fragment D. 67a
(which compares the soul within the body to a spider within its web); the
second is that of Marcovich (pp. 366f.).
312
116
117
118
119
120
121
Notes to pages 129—133
But there is no good evidence for a connection between psyche and
blood in Heraclitus: this is a Stoic view (see p. 260 and n. 371), though of
course one with older antecedents (as in Empedocles B. 105). I think the
physiological view is a mistake in both its variants.
In later authors echei logon can mean ‘it has something to be said in its
favor’, ‘it is reasonable’, but this usage is not found in Herodotus. The
earliest example seems to be Soph. Electra 466; compare ‘to live kata
logon’ (reasonably, according to a rational principle) in Democritus fr. 53.
The anecdote (cited above, p. 95) contains an echo of Aeschylus,
Suppliants 407: *we need a deep thought (phrontis) to save us, like a diver
who goes to the bottom with his eyes open'.
See the critical study of this alleged monism of the Milesians by Michael
C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy , chapter II, especially
pp. 32—64, with whose results I am in general agreement. Stokes concludes
that ‘there is no reason to associate with them [viz. the Milesians] the
view that all things were one, or that one thing was many things, or any
similar doctrine’ (p. 63). Stokes agrees, however, that ‘the Milesians may
have described their cosmogonies in terms of one and many', where the
unity is understood genetically, as the original source from which the
present plurality of things is derived (p. 64).
For this meaning of kosmos as a technical usage, see the two texts from
Plato (Gorgias 508A) and Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.1.11) discussed in
Anaximander, pp. 219f.
For the pre-philosophical usage of kosmos, my account in Anaximander,
pp. 220ff. must be supplemented by H. Diller ‘Der vorphilosophische
Gebrauch von kosmos und kosmein’, Festschrift Bruno Snell (Munich,
1956), pp. 47ff. My earlier discussion does not sufficiently recognize the
primacy of the military and moral or political sense of kosmos as 'dis-
ciplined array’, ‘troops (or equipment) in good order’, ‘behavior showing
obedience to command’; I overestimated the purely visual notion of
‘something physically neat and trim’. This is a subordinate idea which
can be derived from the moral-military sense, since neat appearance is a
natural concomitant of disciplined order. Compare J. Kerschensteiner,
Kosmos, p.7.
A strong suggestion of the technical use would come at the very beginning,
if we followed Diels and other editors in reading kosmon tonde with Plu-
tarch and Simplicius, instead of (or in addition to) kosmon ton auton
hapantón with Clement. On purely documentary grounds Clement’s read-
ing has the greater authority, since he is the only author to cite XXXVII in
full (as well as XXXVIII—XXXIX). Simplicius, who cites only half of it
without any mention of fire, and Plutarch, who cites even less, must be
quoting from memory or following some inferior doxographical source.
(Similarly, J. Kerschensteiner, Kosmos, pp. 101f.) In any case kosmos
hode ‘this world order’ is a banal phrase, found in every author from
Anaxagoras to Plato who employs kosmos in the technical sense; whereas
the formula in Clement is unusual and ambiguous in the way characteristic
of Heraclitus, for ton auton hapantón can mean either ‘the same (human)
order for all men’ or ‘the same (world) order for all things’. Thus Clement’s
reading is both more authoritative and also more Heraclitean. If we inter-
polate this authentic text with the banal phrase from Simplicius and Plu-
tarch (as nearly all editors have done, with the honorable exception of
Bollack-Wismann), we tend to eliminate the primary reading of kosmos in
its pre-philosophical sense.
Notes to pages 135—140 313
122 The few exceptions to this proposition cannot be decisive for the point at
issue. Most scholars accept the secondary evidence for a ‘great year’ in
Heraclitus (below, XLIII = DK A 13), although it is not confirmed by an
original quotation. But whether or not this great year is to be interpreted
as involving major cosmic transformations will depend in turn upon one's
understanding of the extant fragments.
123 This is the sense that has been given to these words by many eminent
scholars. Thus Cherniss: ‘This fragment asserts that it is this cosmos that is
fire; I cannot believe that is reconcilable with an ekpyrósis or with world-
periods of any kind.’ (AJP 56 (1935), 415: Cherniss and others rely upon
the editorial interpolation of tonde ‘this’ into Clement's text, but that is
probably not crucial for either side.) Similarly Kirk, p. 336; Guthrie, p.
455, and many others. Compare Burnet, p. 162, and Reinhardt, pp. 175f.
124 Anaximander, p. 225, n. 2. In the eighteen years since these lines were
written, I have not found any reason to change them.
125 So likewise Vlastos, ‘On Heraclitus’, in Furley and Allen, pp. 423ff.
126 See Anaximander, p. 150, for confirmation of the accuracy of this account.
127 There has been some debate about whether or not we should punctuate
after ‘it ever was and is and will be’, and before ‘fire everliving'. Since
Heraclitus wrote without punctuation marks, the issue is not one of text
but of interpretation. Here as elsewhere I think we must have it both ways.
As Reinhardt demonstrated, the three forms of the verb ‘be’ clearly have
their full existential (or ‘vital’) value in the formula for eternity, re-echoed
in аеігбоп, ‘everliving’. But these verbs also serve as copula, with 'ever-
living fire' as predicate. The notion that 'be' in Greek must be either exist-
ential or copulative, but not both at once, is one of those superstitions
that should have been discarded by now. See The Verb ‘Be’ in Ancient
Greek, pp. 80, 139—41, 164—7, etc.
128 J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, p. 123.
129 My rendering follows a suggestion of G.E.L. Owen that the nominative
form gé ‘earth’ requires the same subject for the preceding verb én ‘it was’.
130 Vermdchtnis, p. 51; more cautiously Marcovich and others cited by him,
p. 286.
131 The Theophrastean interpretation is given in Appendix IIA. The fullest
Stoic exegesis, referring XXXVIII to cosmogony and XXXIX to the ecpyrosis,
is preserved by Clement in the quotation of these fragments; see von
Arnim, II, No. 590, and below, n. 135. For the influence of the Theo-
phrastean doxography on the Stoa, see J. Kerschensteiner, ‘Der Bericht
des Theophrast über Heraklit’, Hermes 83 (1955), who perhaps underesti-
mates the extent to which the Stoics also studied Heraclitus’ own words.
132 Isay ‘transformation’ since it is not entirely clear whether the temporal
process in XXXIX is a continuous interchange of land and sea within the
present world order or some larger cosmic cycle. I suspect it is both. See
p. 144.
133 Herodotus uses the term four times, twice in sense (1) and twice in sense
(2A). Senses (1) and (2) are as old as Homer; sense (2A) is first attested in
Hesiod. See my ‘On early Greek astronomy’ p. 113, with nn. 50—2.
134 Sorightly Snell, ‘Die Sprache Heraklits’ in Gesammelte Schriften, p. 134.
But in denying that this process of ‘turnings’ is depicted as a sequence
spread out in time, Snell abandons his own principle of taking Heraclitus’
imagery at full strength. For the temporal value of ‘turnings’ in archaic
Greek literature see Hesiod, Theogony 58: 'as the seasons turned around'
(peri d’ etrapon horai); Semonides 1.8 (Diehl): ‘the turnings-round of the
314
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
Notes to pages 141—142
years' (eteón peritropai, again referring to the cycle of the seasons).
See D. 31 = Marcovich, p. 278. The Stoic interpretation is as old as Chrysi-
ppus (von Arnim II, No. 579): 'the change of fire is as follows: it turns
(trepetai) through air into water’. It may well go back to Zeno (ibid. No.
581 = D.L. VII.142); compare von Arnim I, 102 = Arius Didymus fr. 38
Diels, where we find the doctrine expressed with Heraclitus’ own term
tropé. Zeno seems to have derived his physics directly from a reading of
Heraclitus; hence Cleanthes' long commentary on the latter.
See Anaxagoras fr. 16, with parallels in Anaximenes A 7.3 and probably
also in Anaximander A 27. In Melissus B 8.3 ‘from water, earth and stone
arise’ seems to be cited as a fact of everyday experience, as in Timaeus
49Bff. It is not so much a fact of observation as a theoretical way of
describing certain phenomena of drying, freezing and sedimentation. The
theory which determines this description is just the Ionian cosmogony.
Thus the account of Chrysippus continues: 'and out of water, as earth
comes into existence, air is evaporated [or ‘exhaled’, anathy miatai] . As air
is thinned out, the sky is poured around (aithér pericheita:) in a circle. The
stars with the sun are kindled from the sea’ (von Arnim II, No. 579; see
the parallel doctrine assigned to Zeno and Chrysippus ibid. 581 - D.L.
VII.142). The Stoics are developing Heraclitus' remarks in the light of the
traditional Ionian cosmogony; so already Theophrastus in D.L. IX.9—11
(see Appendix IIA). Despite Reinhardt, they may have had one or two
lost sentences of Heraclitus to help them out. The sun and stars *kindled
(anaptontai) from the sea' in Chrysippus might well be the echo of a lost
Heraclitean text (just as pericheitai in Chrysippus echoes diacheetai in
XXXIX).
Theogony 846. Even if the verse were post-Hesiodic, as some editors have
thought, it would still be older than Heraclitus. As Wilamowitz observes
(in his comment on Lysistrata 974) the production of préstéres by
Typhoeus in the Theogony prefigures the connection between typhon
(whirlwind) and préstér in Aristophanes (loc. cit.).
Some authors (including LSJ) suggest a derivation from prétho ‘to blow’;
but that is not the sense Aristotle sees in préstér. Similarly, préstéres
anemoi in Theogony 846 must be ‘burning’ (not ‘blowing’) winds. In the
Lysistrata passage (973ff.) what préstér adds to typhón is precisely the
notion of fire, as Wilamowitz remarks, following the scholiast.
This includes the metaphorical use in Euripides fr. 384 Nauck, where ‘the
twin préstéres flowing down' are jets of blood from lacerated eyes.
For recent discussion taking préstér in this sense, including a photograph
of a Mediterranean waterspout, see J J. Hall, ‘Préstéros aulos’ in JHS 89
(1969), 57—9 with Plate VI; and further comments by P. Plass, ibid. 92
(1972), 179f. This phenomenon does occur in the Aegean area; but the
connection between waterspout (or tornado) and lightning storm is not
regular enough for this to be what Herodotus, Aristophanes, and Xeno-
phon are speaking of. Aristotle describes the préstér not as 'a variant of
the typhón' (as Hall claims, p. 57) but as a development from the same
raw material as thunder and lightning, hurricane (eknephias) and whirl-
wind (typhon). Hall, following Burnet and LSJ, may have been misled by
the closer connection between préstér and whirlwind in Hellenistic and
Roman authors. Lucretius VI.423ff. certainly describes a waterspout in
his account of préstér; but that is not true of any classic Greek author, as
far as I can see. (For confusion in Lucretius’ account, see Bailey's com-
mentary, p. 1618.) Herodotus and Xenophon are both referring to disas-
142
148
144
145
146
147
Notes to pages 142—145 815
ters on land; and they have in mind fire, not water. Aristophanes (Lysis-
trata 973ff.) and Aristotle (Meteor. 371a 14ff.) both describe a typhón
(not a préstér) as lifting things off the ground, like a tornado. Friends long
familiar with Greek weather tell me this can be paralleled nowadays in
localized wind storms, but that there is no Greek equivalent to the great
*twisters' of the central plains of North America.
For the close connection, amounting sometimes to identification, between
préstér and thunderbolt (keraunos), see West's note to Theogony 846.
Burnet had a theory to account for this. ‘This must mean that, at any
given moment, half of the sea is taking the downward path, and has just
been fiery storm-cloud, while half of it is going up, and has just been
earth' (Early Greek Philosophy, p. 149, italics added). Heraclitus! words
admit many interpretations, but I doubt that this is one. The text indicates
that earth and préstér represent stages following upon sea (and this is clear
also from the phrase 'before it became earth' in XXXIX). If Burnet has
made them precede the sea, that is not by sheer perversity but in order to
render possible his generalization of this law for ‘each of the three aggre-
gates, Fire, Water and Earth’: each one is ‘made up of two equal portions
... one of which is taking the upward and the other the downward path’
(ibid. 163). Here the motivation for calculating from the preceding phase
is clear. For of course half of fire can at any given moment be taking the
upward path only if one counts from the stage before. And similarly for
the half of earth that is supposed to be on the downward path. (Burnet
does not call attention to the fact that, contrariwise, for the half of fire on
the downward path, and the half of earth going upwards, one must count
as we expect, prospectively.) The artifice here in the interpretation of
Heraclitus’ words ‘half earth, half préstér’ is worthy of Clement and the
Stoics. And in fact the introduction of the upward and downward path
into the commentary on XXXVIII-XXXIX is due to Theophrastus (in
D.L. IX.9 - DK 22A 1.9; cited with approval by Burnet, p. 148).
Kirk, p. 330; cf. Kirk and Raven, p. 201. Kirk's view of XXXVIII (D. 31A)
is accepted by Vlastos (in Furley and Allen, p. 419), though he differs on
XXXIX (D. 31B).
See Xenophanes A 33.5—6 and my suggestion in Anaximander, p. 185,
that the sinking of the earth into the sea was regarded by the Milesians as
necessary ‘reparation’ to the moist for an excessive victory of the dry.
As far as I can see, this holds true on any reading of this controversial text.
On my version (the text of Clement-Eusebius accepted by Diels and Marco-
vich), the sea is measured according to the same logos as ‘before it became
earth'. On the most reasonable alternative (proposed independently by
Cherniss and Wiese; and cf. Bollack-Wismann, p. 134) the sea is measured
‘in the same logos which was at first’ (hokoios próton én), whatever that
may be. In any case the construction of metreetai eis ton auton logon is
that of measurement ‘up to’ a definite mark or limit previously established,
as in the refilling of an empty container. (See Powell, Lexicon, s.v. es
A.IV and C.1—3, p. 146.)
It is an interesting question why the Stoics followed Heraclitus not only in
foreseeing a world conflagration but also in beginning the cosmogony from
fire. This can scarcely be for physical reasons; as a plausible process, world
formation begins for the Stoics in almost Milesian fashion with primeval
moisture, associated with aér. The initial step, from Fire to moisture, is
metaphysical dogma rather than physical theory, dictated by requirements
of symmetry and the authority of Heraclitus. But I suspect it was fire that
316
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
Notes to pages 145—151
brought the Stoics to Heraclitus rather than Heraclitus that brought them
to fire. Zeno's choice of fire as first principle may һауе been decided by its
dynamic role as power of transformation in the arts. Cf. the Stoic notion
of pyr technikon ‘fire the artificer’.
For cosmic cycles in Milesian thought, see Anaximander, pp. 184f.; com-
pare pp. 47—53.
Cf. gold as object of search and desire in VIII (D. 22) and the metaphor of
Pindar's First Olympian: 'gold is a gleaming fire'.
See Zeller-Nestle I.2 (1920), pp. 796ff.
As formulated, Zeller's interpretation presupposes the anachronistic read-
ing of sixth-century monism which I have rejected above (p. 131), follow-
ing Stokes. It remains to be seen whether Zeller's view could be reformu-
lated without such anachronism.
Zeller-Nestle 1.2, pp. 865ff. Zeller rightly sees that the only ancient testi-
mony that appears to tell against this interpretation of Heraclitus, the oft-
quoted passage in Plato's Sophist 242C—D, is not a definite statement on
the point at issue (pp. 875f.). And he also sees that the statement in
Aetius (DK 22.A10) that ‘the cosmos is generated not in time but only in
conception’ presupposes the existence of a literal cosmogony, as in the
similar interpretation of Plato's Timaeus.
Burnet, p. 145 with note 1. This view of fire as a figure of stable form
maintained by constant change seems profoundly true to Heraclitus’ inten-
tion; and (like many others) I have unconsciously echoed Burnet’s remark
on other occasions.
And cf. XLIX (D. 126), LXVII (D. 110—11), XC (D. 26), etc.
The same holds for XLI (D. 76) whether or not it is an authentic fragment,
since its form is directly parallel to that of CII (D. 36).
It is passages like this one on the bow and the lyre which justify Plato's
contrast between the austere Heraclitean Muses, who insist that things are
always one and many, ‘always coming together in divergence’, with the
softer Sicilian Muses who relax this tension of 'always' and substitute an
alternating pattern of unity and plurality, Love and Strife (Sophist
242C—D). If Plato had denied the importance of periodicity for Heraclitus,
he would simply be mistaken. But all he says is that, unlike Empedocles,
Heraclitus does not need this periodic pattern in order to conceive the
unity of opposites.
Burnet, p. 150: ‘And yet the “measures” are not absolutely fixed.’ He goes
on to speak of the alternation of day and night, summer and winter. So in
referring to the measures of the sun he sees periodic recurrence as a kind of
exception that proves the rule: ‘Of course there is a certain variation, as we
saw; but it is strictly confined within limits, and is compensated in the
long run by a variation in the other direction’ (pp. 161f.). Note the ambig-
uity between *in the long run' here, where the diachronic stipulation is
indispensable for any pattern of symmetry, and the occurrence of the same
phrase in the earlier quotation from p. 150 (above, on p. 149), where it
seemed incidental.
This down-playing of periodic phenomena is all the more unconvincing,
since for the meaning of ‘measures’ here Burnet correctly refers to Diogenes
fr. 3, where they are exemplified only by periodic recurrence: the measures
*of winter and summer and night and day and rainfall and winds and fair
weather'.
Burnet, p. 161, followed by Kirk (pp. 347f.): ‘the simile quite clearly pre-
cludes complete alternation, for in the exchange of gold and goods neither
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
Notes to pages 151—154 317
element is ever absorbed into the other (as ta panta would have to be in
pyr), but the total of each remains the same’. Similarly Marcovich, p. 295.
See Reinhardt, Parmenides, pp. 168ff.; more fully in Wiese, pp. 238—46.
Ibid. 177. Note that this is not an objection but a confirmation for those
of us who regard the philosopher of Ephesus as reacting to his older con-
temporaries in nearby Miletus. It is one of the eccentricities of Reinhardt's
book that he wished to explain Heraclitus’ thought as a response instead to
Parmenides in faraway Italy. Parmenides’ poem was almost certainly un-
known to Heraclitus, although it may have been composed during his life-
time.
Cf. ‘Heraklits Lehre vom Feuer’, in Vermáchtnis, pp. 55ff. Reinhardt con-
cedes that the term metra can have a temporal aspect, as in Heraclitus
XLIV (D. 94) and Diogenes fr. 3, but in effect denies the relevance of this
for the interpretation of XXXVII—XL.
Vlastos, who clearly posed this question, does not offer a clear answer in
physical terms. His implied answer is that the priority of fire is due to the
fact that it is intelligent and governs the cosmos (‘On Heraclitus’, in Furley
and Allen, p. 424). With this I agree, but it does not help us interpret the
exchanges of XL (D. 90) or the 'reversals' of XXXVII (D. 30). Vlastos
does suggest (ibid. p. 421) that XL ‘identifies fire as the thing that remains
constant in all transformations and implies that its measure is the same or
common measure in all things... Thus . . . the invariance of its measures
is what accounts for the observance of the metron in all things.’ This is a
gallant defence of a hopelessly lost cause. For if all things observe the
measure, fire is not in any discernible way privileged in remaining ‘constant
in all transformations’. We are left with the fact that there is no physical
basis for the priority of fire in Heraclitus’ system if we follow Burnet and
Reinhardt in depriving it of the dimension of cosmogony.
Among recent scholars only Gigon and Guthrie have accepted it as an
independent fragment; others regard it as an inaccurate paraphrase of CII
(D. 36). See Guthrie, I, p. 453 with n. 2; Gigon, Untersuchungen, p. 99,
Ursprung, p. 224. I previously argued for authenticity in Anaximander, p.
152, n. 1.
Compare Maximus' version of D. 62 with the fuller quotation in Hippoly-
tus to judge this author's accuracy in citation: see texts 47b? апа 47a in
Marcovich, pp. 236f.
Maximus is scarcely an expert on Heraclitus. He seems to know only three
fragments: the way up and down (CIII, D. 60); the gods living our life and
we living their death (XCII, D. 62), and the citation under discussion here,
which is presented less as an independent quotation than as an interpret-
ation of D. 62. See the full context in Marcovich, р. 167 (text 3344).
See W.C. Helmbold and E.N. O'Neil, Plutarch's Quotations (New York,
1959), p. 34.
According to Wiese, pp. 322—5, there are some 74 quotations or allusions
in Clement's much less voluminous works. Clement accounts for 23
quotations in Diels’ edition, whereas Plutarch accounts for 17. We may
note that Hippolytus also accounts for 18, one more than Plutarch. But
these quotations are concentrated in a single section of Hippolytus' work,
and they reflect special research (whether by Hippolytus or by some pre-
decessor) rather than a general familiarity with the text.
Helmbold and O'Neil, Plutarch's Quotations, p. IX. *His memory was pro-
digious, and his confidence in it no less so, as when he asserts that such-
and-such does not occur in Plato (Mor. 1115C—D); and sure enough it does
318
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
Notes to pages 154—158
not. But he committed the kind of error that one almost always makes in
citing from memory.' In quotations from Heraclitus Plutarch sometimes
corrects himself, by giving a more literal version elsewhere. (See the two
versions of XLIV, D. 94, in Marcovich, p. 274.) When we can check his ver-
sion against verbatim citations, we usually find he has omitted or altered
at least a word or two. (Compare Plutarch’s versions of CIX, D. 118, with
the text given by Musonius, Stobaeus, and Philo, and Clement, 68a! —а7
in Marcovich, рр. 371—2.) Only in very short quotations can we confirm
his literal accuracy (e.g. XXVIII, D. 101; LXXXVIII, D. 96; CXIV, D. 119;
see Marcovich, pp. 53ff., 407, and 500).
Thus in XL (D. 90) the slight change from antamoibé (which I restore,
with Diels and others) to antameibetai in the MSS may well be due to
Plutarch himself, rather than to his copyists. On the other hand, in XXXIII
(D. 93) the inferior parallel in Stobaeus (see Marcovich, p. 49) shows just
how good Plutarch's memory can be.
De primo frigido 948F; and cf. de Iside 363D; both in Marcovich, p. 356.
See Kirk, pp. 343f. with Marcovich, p. 360, and Bollack-Wismann, p. 235.
Anaximander, p. 152 n.; cf. pp. 145ff.
So, for example, Kirk, p. 343; ‘fragments 31 and 36 show quite clearly that
he [sc. Heraclitus] believed that the main constituents of the world were
fire, sea, earth — not air’.
Reinhardt, ‘Heraclitea’, in Vermächtnis, pp. 75—83; clarified by Kirk, pp.
295—303.
Kirk, p. 294, and Marcovich, p. 344, emphasize the dactylic rhythm of
XLIIA (horas hai panta pherousin); Reinhardt regards version В (‘what the
seasons bring’) as better attested (Vermächtnis, p. 76). In either case
Heraclitus may have used an old phrase to express a new idea.
It is rejected by Marcovich, p. 345, and by Bollack-Wismann, p. 287.
The term epitropeuein is applied to fire *which begets and administers all
other things' at Theaetetus 153A8, where Plato has just mentioned Herac-
litus (152E) and the doctrine of flux. A few lines later he observes that the
preservation of cosmic order depends upon the continuous movement of
the sun and of the heavens generally.
That is suggested, but not established by the fact that in the same context
of the Cratylus Plato paraphrases CXXII (D. 16): see above, p. 275. This
shows either that Plato himself is interpreting the text of Heraclitus (in
which case our bold step might well be justified) or that his Heraclitean
sources were doing so.
DK A 1.8; see Appendix IIA.
Aetius 1.27.1 (Diels, Doxographi, р. 322), in DK A 8. Contrast the purely
Stoic interpretations of Heraclitean Fate given by Aetius in 1.28.1 (also
cited in DK A 8). This more confused tradition is responsible for an alleged
quotation: ‘Thus Heraclitus writes: “things are entirely fated” ' (Aetius
1.27.1 = fr. 137, recognized by Diels as inauthentic).
On Regimen 1.5 (DK I, p. 183, lines 5 and 7); compare 1.10 (ibid. p. 185,
1. 17). Some such statement is presupposed by the view of Anaxagoras:
‘he says that nothing occurs by fate (heimarmené), but this is an empty
word' (DK 59.A 66, from Alexander).
Reinhardt, Parmenides, pp. 188—90 (cf. p. 184); accepted by Kirk, p. 301.
The only exception I have noted is Bollack-Wismann, who accept the num-
ber 30 for a generation (p. 183), but refuse to speculate about any larger
cycle (p. 287).
As Guthrie points out (p. 458, n. 4), Aristotle speaks of a 'great winter'
with an excess of rain in connection with larger astronomical periods
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
Notes to pages 159—162 319
(Meteor. 1.14, 352231). The idea of the cosmic year is clearly formulated
by Plato at Timaeus 22C—23A, with alternate destructions of human
civilization by flood and fire, referred to as ‘winter’ and as ‘(summer) heat
(каита) at 22E6. (Cf. Critias 109D, Laws 677 A.) It seems clear that Plato
is here developing a pre-Socratic theory, not inventing one of his own.
Contrast the myth of the Statesman (269 Aff.), where Plato is making up
his own version of the cosmic cycle.
In order to avoid this interpretation of the Great Year Reinhardt suggested
a cycle of transmigrations such as we find in Empedocles and in Plato's
Phaedrus: as the ‘day’ of the great year is a human lifetime, ‘so must the
year of the soul, its migration through the cycle of births, also last 360
such days, and consequently 30 times 360 solar years’ (Parmenides, p.
199; followed with some hesitation by Kirk, p. 302). But there is not the
slightest evidence for Heraclitus' belief in transmigration; and his attacks
upon Pythagoras provide some evidence against it — particularly in the
light of his insistence that men have no inkling of what is waiting for them
at death (LXXXIV, D. 27)! (See below on XCII, D. 62.) Reinhardt's
suggestion that 10,800 years is the period of the soul's transmigrations can
only be seen as an arbitrary attempt to avoid the interpretation offered by
Theophrastus: that this is a ‘fixed time for the change of the cosmos accord-
ing to some fated necessity’.
Iam afraid the same must be said of other attempts to accept the period
of 10,800 years while rejecting Theophrastus’ account of it. The most
influential way out is that of Burnet (pp. 157f.) developed recently by
Vlastos (in his review of Kirk, AJP 76 (1955), 311) and accepted by
Guthrie (I, 458). Vlastos sees quite clearly that, by analogy, the great year
ought to be ‘the period of the world’s complete renewal’, a kind of ‘world-
generation’. But in order to avoid the natural implications of this, he thinks
of it (with Lassalle and Burnet) as ‘the time required for every part of the
fire which takes the “downward” turn at any given moment to return to
its source, or, to look at it the other way round, the interval after which
every part of water and earth existing at any given time will have been re-
placed’. This he admits is only a ‘likely guess’, for it is difficult to find even
a toe-hold for it in the fragments. But it can scarcely be regarded as likely,
or even coherent, unless we can make sense of the notion of a part or
particle of fire that preserves its identity throughout elemental change, or
a part of water that preserves its identity until it is replaced. Now this idea
is not only absent from the fragments but incompatible with Heraclitus’
own conception of identity, which is that of a pattern (like night-and-day)
and not of a formless ‘glob’ or fistful of matter. What remains the same is
the river, not the water rushing by.
Aristotle, Meteorologica II.6, 363a31—b6, with Lee's diagram in the Loeb
edition, p. 187. Also W.A. Heidel, The Frame of Ancient Greek Maps (New
York, 1937), pp. 17ff. For possible evidence of this system on Babylonian
maps of the sixth century B.C., see Anaximander, p. 83 n. 3.
See ‘On early Greek astronomy’, pp. 106ff. with nn. 25 and 27.
George A. Megas, Greek Calendar Customs (Athens, 2nd ed. 1963), p. 133.
For the Greek use of the Bear — first Ursa Major, then Ursa Minor — as a
fixed point for steering by night, see the passages in PW II, 1173, 40—8,
and the reference to Thales in Callimachus (DK 11.A 3a, vv. 118—20).
I see that this solution (proposed earlier in ‘A new look at Heraclitus’, p.
197, col. B) was guessed long ago by G. Teichmüller, Neue Studien zur
Geschichte der Begriffe I (Gotha, 1876), p. 16, cited by Marcovich, p. 338.
Hesiod puts the evening rising of Arcturus 60 days after the winter solstice,
320 Notes to pages 163—170
and hence a month before the actual equinox; Geminus lists it for 24
February. Spring comes early in Greece. The dawn or heliacal rising of
Arcturus corresponds to the middle of September, and thus more closely
to the autumnal equinox (dates from Wilamowitz on Erga 567 and 610; cf.
PW III, 718 for dates according to a variety of ancient sources).
192 See texts in Marcovich, pp. 312f.
193 Thereference to a human foot in Aetius may not have formed part of the
original text. The Theophrastean doxography (D.L. IX.7) says only ‘the
sun is the size it appears'. From repeated statements in Aristotle, where
Heraclitus’ name is not mentioned, we know that ‘the sun is a foot long’
was a stock example of an appearance that educated men do not accept as
true. (Texts in Marcovich, pp. 307f., Deichgráber, pp. 25f.) Aetius' version
may represent a doxographical tradition in which these two items have
been unscrupulously combined. Compare the way in which Heraclitus'
account of solar extinction and rekindling becomes more detailed in later
sources (Marcovich, p. 313, texts b2 and b3).
194 See B. Snell, ‘Die Sprache Heraklits’, in Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 132ff.
195 The words of XLIX serve so well as an explication of Anaximander’s frag-
ment that W. Brócker once suggested that Heraclitus was quoting here
from Anaximander! That seems unlikely; but scarcely more so than
Bollack-Wismann's rejection of XLIX (p. 345) as the pseudo-Heraclitean
formulation of a banal idea.
196 For cases of systematic ambiguity see the construal of ekeinón (twice) in
XCII (D. 62), and pantón in XXVII (D. 108), XXX (D. 114), XXXI (D. 113),
etc. Compare the double construction of aie; іп 1.1 and the three forms of
*to be' in XXXVII (D. 30) above, n. 127.
197 So Reinhardt, Parmenides, pp. 177, 206f., and others since. Cf. Burnet,
pp. 145f.
198 Aristotle, Met. Gamma 5, 1010a14. Edward Hussey suggests that Cratylus
himself may have been the first to formulate Heraclitus’ statement in this
way (‘you cannot step twice into the river’) in order to correct him. If so,
both Plato and Aristotle were deceived by Cratylus as to what Heraclitus
actually said.
199 Стаі. 439C—D; cf. Theaetetus 182C, etc.
200 = This is, in effect, Bywater's reconstruction, following another version in
Plutarch; see his fr. XLI. For a supposed third ‘fragment’ referring to the
river, see D.49a in Appendix I.
201 For a survey of scholarly opinion see Marcovich, pp. 207f., who rejects all
three pairs as un-Heraclitean. Similarly Bollack-Wismann, p. 268.
202 Acareful study shows that Plotinus cites 11 fragments, 6 of them in full;
see Evangelos Roussos, O Herakleitos stis Enneades tou Plotinou (Athens,
1968), p. 80 (p. 98, German summary). But these tend to be the more
familiar sayings; only in the present case does he quote a text not other-
wise known. Roussos agrees with Richard Harder that the quotations
reflect Plotinus’ own reading of Heraclitus. See also Wilhelm Halbfass,
*Plotins Interesse an Heraklit’, Festschrift für Karl Deichgrüber, Gottingen,
1968 (typescript of the Seminar fiir Klassische Philologie); W. Burkert,
‘Plotinus, Plutarch und die platonisierende Interpretation von Heraklit und
Empedocles’, in Kephalaion. Studies . . . C.J. de Vogel (Assen, 1975), pp.
137—46.
203 See LXXVIII—LXXXIII, and above all CXV—CXXV. These correspond to
the theologikos logos in the division cited in the Introduction (above, p. 9,
n. 24). The remaining section, LV —LXXVII, together with earlier fragments
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
Notes to pages 170—174 321
like XXX—XXXII, will represent the politikos logos, the discourse on man
and society.
See Kirk, p. 389, and Gigon, Untersuchungen, p. 144. The texts of
Bywater and Walzer are comparable. Diels thought he could keep 67€7 as
a feminine form of #j71¢, but he was mistaken. It is not just that this par-
ticular form is unattested: there is simply no such thing as a feminine stem
for TiS (= Latin quis). That was pointed out by Bechtel in 1924 in refer-
ence to this very fragment (Die griechische Dialekte YII (Berlin, 1924),
171); and it is remarkable that classical scholars fifty years later continue
to print this text with linguistically impossible forms. (That includes the
dative orént, proposed by Deichgraber.) Even Marcovich (pp. 447f.), who
cites Bechtel (and Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik I (Munich, 1938),
616, where the absence of feminine forms of TiS is conspicuous), lists four
‘likely’ emendations of which two are linguistically unacceptable. We have,
in fact, only the choice between Ok (önn) ‘Show’ and rew (= Йтих) ‘by
which’. Unless someone produces an Ionic parallel for ġrew with a
feminine antecedent, we had better stick to Ok], as in CVI (D. 117).
Kirk, p. 388, argues that a mechanical corruption from kybernatai is more
probable; I am not sure. The present middle, which Kirk accepts, reads
more smoothly, but seems stylistically weak. All the early parallels (except
Diogenes fr. 5) have the verb in the active voice: Anaximander A 15
(= Aristotle, Physics 203b11), Parmenides fr. 12, and the passages from
Pindar and the De Victu cited by Kirk (ibid.). So likewise Heraclitus’ own
use of oiakizei in CXIX (D. 64); compare Anaxagoras fr. 12 (kratei,
diakosmése). The stylistic difference between active and passive here seems
more decisive than that between present and aorist.
Cf. epistatés, ‘supervisor’, ‘overseer’. For this sense of the verb see Archi-
lochus fr. 1 (Diehl): ‘Iam a master (epistamenos) of the desirable gift of
the Muses’; fr. 66 hen d' epistamai ‘there is one thing I am good at’. The
same imagery with a different verb (the causative of epistamai) occurs in
Hesiod. Works and Days 659: 'at the place where the Muses first set me
over (epebésan *made me master of") sweet song'.
See IV (D. 17), XIX (D. 57) and XXVII (D. 108); cf. XXIX (D. 116), LXI
(D. 97), and LXXXV (D. 28A).
The inference becomes explicit in Diogenes fr. 3: ‘It would not be possible
for things to be so distributed without intelligence (noésis), so that there
are measures (metra) of all things, of winter and summer and night and day
and rainfall and winds and fair weather.' For the notion of universal 'steer-
ing’ in Anaximander, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras and Diogenes, see the
passages cited p. 272, with n. 400.
So Bollack-Wismann, p. 240.
For the traditional thought, see Semonides of Amorgos fr. 1.3 West: "There
is no understanding (noos) in men, but day by day (ephémeroi) we live like
cattle knowing nothing.' Cf. J. Mansfeld, Chapter I of Die Offenbarung des
Parmenides.
So Marcovich (pp. 488f., with others) and Bollack-Wismann (pp. 248f.).
The authenticity of the Hippias Major is irrelevant to the question of its
reliability as a source for Heraclitus. Iam convinced that the dialogue is
artistically and even intellectually too crude to be a work of Plato. But the
author is a careful writer who reproduces Platonic doctrine with consider-
able accuracy and could have cited Heraclitus correctly if he wished.
See ‘A thought pattern in Heraclitus’, AJP 59 (1938), 309—37; German
translation in Wege und Formen (3rd ed.), pp. 253ff. Frankel needlessly
322
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
Notes to pages 174—183
apologized for his use of mathematical terminology; he forgot that one of
the basic senses of logos is precisely 'ratio', 'geometrical proportion'. But
Heraclitus’ pattern is the formal development of an older mode of expres-
sion, as in the quotation from Semonides in n. 210 above: as cattle stand
to us (in understanding), so do we stand to the gods.
Cf. XL (D. 90): as gold is to merchandise, so is fire to all things. The same
pattern emerges from the juxtaposition of VIII (D. 22) with IX (D. 35),
and from LX (D. 87) with LXI (D. 97). See on LXI.
Cf. IV (D. 17), XIX (D. 57), XXVII (D. 108), etc.; also gnómé in LIV (D.
41); gnosis in XXII (D. 56).
See Hipponax (73 Diehl) and Demodocus (6 Diehl), cited by D.L. 1.84.
Aristotle, Nic. Ethics V.1, 1130a1 and Rhet. 11.13, 1389b23f. For further
details see Crusius in PW III (1899), 383—9.
D.L. 1.87 and 88. This is the first of the sayings attributed to Bias in the
list of Demetrius of Phaleron (DK I, p. 65). Cf. Bruno Snell, Leben und
Meinungen der Sieben Weisen (3rd ed. Munich, 1952), pp. 12 and 102.
D.L. 1.88; cf. PW III, 388, 32—4.
See DK 22.A 3a and Marcovich, pp. 538f.; discussion by Münzer,
*Hermodorus (3)' in PW VIII (1913), 860. It has been conjectured that
the Roman story reflects some historical fame of Hermodorus as lawgiver
or judge in Ephesus. For the slim evidence, see R. Schottlaender, ‘Heraklits
angebliche Aristokratismus', Klio 43—5 (1965), 25f. Cf. Marcovich, PW
252.
So Vlastos, ‘Equality and justice in early Greek cosmologies', in Furley-
Allen, p. 72, n. 92. Cf. Bollack-Wismann, p. 333.
The usual classification of Heraclitus as a disgruntled aristocrat, like
Theognis of Megara, does not do justice to the breadth and independence
of vision manifested in the fragments. For a sounder view see Schottlaender
(cited above, n. 219) and Vlastos, p. 70, n. 82 in the article cited in preced-
ing note.
See Herodotus VI.43.8. The date would fit Marcovich's suggestion that
Heraclitus' book was composed around 490 (PW 249).
The egalitarian sentiments attributed to the Ephesians in LXIV (D. 121)
need not reflect an advanced democratic regime; a narrow oligarchy of
jealous peers is also capable of eliminating an outstanding rival. But Herac-
litus’ emphasis on the responsibility of all Ephesians in Hermodorus’ exile
strongly suggests something like a popular vote.
For the connection between koros and the rich and mighty in Solon see,
in addition to the passage quoted, frs. 3.9; 4.6; 5.9.
As we have seen (n. 8), Heraclitus' insistence upon the legal power of a
single man (‘if he is the best’) cannot be understood as a plea for tyranny
or even for constitutional monarchy; the former is excluded by his com-
mitment to the rule of law, while the latter was not a relevant option for
a Greek city of his time.
Bywater and others have assumed that these two sentences form a con-
tinuous text. Kirk (p. 130) and Marcovich (p. 390) prefer to separate them
and thus cut the link between Heraclitus’ moral outlook and his conception
of opposites.
Nic. Ethics 1.8, 1099225; Eud. Ethics ІЛ, 1214al.
No. 10 in the list of Demetrius of Phaleron, DK I, p. 64.
Cf. Theaetetus 176 A: ‘It is not possible for evils to be destroyed; for it is
necessary that there be always something opposed to the good. These evils
have no seat among the gods; but they circulate of necessity in this region
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
Notes to pages 183—190 323
and in mortal nature.’ The dualistic motive that follows (‘therefore one
must endeavor to flee from here to there as quickly as possible’) is Plato’s
own. But his conception of the ‘mortal region’ is faithfully Heraclitean.
Kirk, Marcovich, and Bollack-Wismann accept LXVIII as a reliable para-
phrase. I do not share their optimism.
It is possible to suppose, on one reading of LII—LIII (D. 84), that by con-
trast to human beings the deity itself, as the all-pervading structure of the
world, experiences rest and weariness together, as a single process of con-
stant change.
This is suggested by the context in which Clement quotes LXIX, and per-
haps also by an imitation in one of the spurious ‘Letters of Heraclitus’. So
Marcovich, p. 229. But on Letter VII see now Leonardo Taran in Eraclito:
Testimonianze e Imitazioni, ed. Mondolfo and Taran (Florence, 1972), pp.
336, 345f.
The root sense of diké is that of deiknymi ‘to point, indicate’ and Latin
in-dex ‘pointer’, iu-dex ‘right-pointer, judge’; so also dico in the legal sense
of ‘pronounce judgment’, ‘plead a lawsuit’, ‘make decisions’ (cf. dictator).
The addition of chickens here depends upon whether or not Columella is
to be trusted as a source of LXXII. Many scholars have thought there is
also a genuine kernel to the medieval Latin citation listed as D. 4 (Marco-
vich fr. 38; compare Kirk, pp. 84ff.), which mentions the peculiar taste of
cattle for bitter vetch (oroboi).
See Zeller, Fránkel and others cited by Marcovich, p. 183. Kirk (pp. 78—
80, 83f.) rightly rejects this view.
De Victu 1.10 (p. 12, 1. 4 ed. Joly), cited by DK I, p. 185, 1. 12. De
Nutrimento 19 (DK 1.189, 15), cited by Kirk, p. 75.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.40; Loeb ed. Vol. I, p. 26.
This difference will not be so great if one follows Michael of Ephesus in
interpreting syrmata in LXXI as chortos 'fodder', the natural food of
donkeys. So in the late and distorted citation D. 4, bitter vetch is men-
tioned as fodder for cattle.
For a vague version, see Reinhardt, p. 204; a naive or confused view is
ascribed to Heraclitus by Kirk, pp. 80, 83f. and Guthrie I, 445, among
others.
So Zeller, pp. 832ff.: ‘he concludes . . . that the thing in itself is both
healthy and destructive at the same time’; it was a mark of his lack of
logical training that he was satisfied with the thought that ‘everything has
opposed properties in itself".
Translation and bracketing here reflect the text as given by Kirk and
printed above, p. 62. My own translation there is slightly freer.
See Dodds’ commentary on Plato, Gorgias 456B4, where LXXIII is cited
with Platonic and Hippocratic parallels; for other examples see Gigon and
Marcovich on D. 58. It is possible that the proverbial phrase is older than
Heraclitus; but the next attested example is a generation later, in
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (verse 849), and I am willing to believe (with
Kirk, p. 91) that the proverb originated with Heraclitus.
Marcovich accepts an emendation of Wilamowitz: ‘they produce the same
effect as the diseases'. But this again commits Heraclitus to a negative
comment that weakens the thought of crucial ambivalence.
The MSS give grapheón, corrected by Bernays, Diels and other editors to
gnapheioi ‘in the fuller's shop’ (or ‘for the carding tool'?), by Bywater to
gnapheón ‘of the fullers or carders’ (i.e. the path of their comb, according
to Burnet), and by Marcovich to gnaphén ‘of the carding-rollers’. Kirk (pp.
324
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
Notes to pages 190—195
97ff.) and Bollack-Wismann (p. 202) have tried to make sense of the trans-
mitted text, by referring respectively to the path of the pen in writing ('the
path of letters’ or ‘of writers’) or to some rotating instrument for painting
figures (‘the path of the painters’).
See Hdt. 1.92.4, with parallels in Marcovich, p. 164.
See RJ. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology IV (Leiden, 1964), p. 21.
Compare H. Blümner, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und
Künste bei Griechen und Römern I (2nd ed. Leipzig, 1912), pp. 110ff.
(for combing) and 177ff. (for carding).
For some continuity between ancient and modern Greek technology in
this connection see A.W. Parsons, ‘A Roman water mill in the Athenian
Agora’, Hesperia V (1936), 70—90.
The words ‘He says *'it is опе and the same" ', which Diels and others take
as continuing the text of LXXIV, are probably an addition by Hippolytus
designed to provide the transition to CIII (D. 60) by equating the two
paths. So rightly Bollack-Wismann, pp. 202f.
Kirk, p. 104; cf. Marcovich's table opposite p. 160, and Stokes, One and
Many, p. 91.
Aristotle cites the view of people *who think Heraclitus claimed that the
same thing can both be and not be (so)', in Metaphysics Gamma 8,
1005b25; cf. 1012a24—34.
Compare Stokes, One and Many, pp. 91 and 97. But I see no reason to
credit Heraclitus with the fallacious inference that therefore straight and
crooked were the same (as Stokes and others do, following the interpret-
ation of Hippolytus). Even if he said 'the straight and crooked path of the
roller is one and the same (path)' — if the fuller text accepted by Diels and
Marcovich belongs to Heraclitus — he was saying something obviously true.
It is only the gloss of Hippolytus that turns this into a confused assertion
of the identity of contraries.
See Marcovich, pp. 429f. As Diels pointed out, the Homeric image of the
thunderbolt and the notion of cosmic guidance by a blow (p/égé) are com-
bined by Cleanthes in his Hymn to Zeus (DK 22.C 4), following up a
Heraclitean thought; cf. CXIX (D. 64).
Il. ХУП.447 = Od. XVIII.131. The parallel was noted by Nestle (in Zeller,
p. 911 n. 2) and substantiated by Marcovich, loc. cit.
This third, most esoteric level of interpretation, generally rejected by recent
commentators, was accurately perceived by Chrysippus (von Arnim II, no.
937, cited by Marcovich as 31b!); and apparently also by Theophrastus,
who quotes LXXVII in connection with the circular motion of 'those
things which are naturally such as to move in this way', i.e. the heavenly
bodies. The same thought underlies some Heraclitean sections of the
Cratylus, where the notion of the cosmic logos is connected with the
celestial rotation. Cf. Cratylus 408C with 413B, 417C.
For this theme of the logos as a kind of objective discourse see above, p.
98.
Of course, ¿f there was a mistake in Hippolytus’ text, we could explain it
by the two preceding occurrences of homologein. But the fact that an
error might have occurred cannot count as evidence that it did. And the
only thing brought forward to show that there is in fact an error in
Hippolytus’ text is some entirely arbitrary speculation about what Plato
could or should have made Eryximachus say.
For the three citations in Plutarch see Marcovich, pp. 122f. The exception
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
Notes to pages 196—201 325
occurs in one of Plutarch's latest and most allegorical works, On Isis and
Osiris, where he is scarcely interested in exact quotation. The same mistake
occurs independently in one manuscript of one of the other two quotations
in Plutarch, where other manuscripts faithfully preserve palintropos (see
Kirk, p. 211). The fact that an author like Proclus (who does not quote
but simply alludes to LXXVIII) makes the same mistake is of no interest
whatsoever: he may be influenced by Plutarch's De Iside, or he may be
independently misled by his memory of the Homeric formula, like Plu-
tarch himself in one case and his copyist in another.
Frs. 27 Diels = 92 Bollack, 96 Diels = 462 Bollack. Like Heraclitus,
Empedocles plays on a plurality of senses for harmonié, among which the
concrete meaning of ‘link’ or ‘joint’ is conspicuous.
This last, more general sense is possible in Pythian VIIL68, probable in fr.
125 (Bowra): aoidan te kai harmonian aulois epephrasato. It is frequent
later, e.g. in Aristotle, Poetics 1447a22 and passim, where harmonia regu-
larly means ‘melody’ or simply ‘music’.
See my 'Pythagorean philosophy before Plato', in The Pre-Socratics ed.
A.P.D. Mourelatos (Doubleday, 1974), pp. 176—8, 183—5.
In Plato harmonia in this sense becomes practically a synonym for sym-
phonia ‘sounding together’, which again has both literal (musical) and
figurative (moral and social) meanings. This assimilation of harmonia to
symphonia, where the musical application is primary and applications to
carpentry, for example, are lacking, accounts for the loss of the older
physical and structural notions in post-Platonic uses of harmonie.
For a later parallel to this wider sense, compare the harmonia of Zeus
which mortal plans cannot transgress in Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
551. An echo of Heraclitus here is not out of the question.
Cited by Burnet (pp. 163f.) with approval; rejected by Kirk (p. 216) on
the grounds that ‘the action of the hands . . . could not possibly be
described as harmonié’. That is true, but irrelevant. The point is to see the
structure or fitting of the bow as an illustration of ‘how in variance it agrees
with itself".
LXXV, D. 8. Even if Aristotle is only paraphrasing LXXVIII and CXXIV,
his paraphrase is an apt commentary. Cf. Symp. 187 A—B.
For the defence of this reading see above, pp. 195f. The exact sense of
palintonos is itself not entirely clear. Hdt. (VII.69.1) uses it for the curving
shape of an oriental bow; and LSJ suggests that the bows are bent ‘the
opposite way to that in which they are drawn'. Kirk (p. 214), who reads
palintonos harmonié in LXXVIII, understands it to refer to tension in the
strings or in the instrument: ‘a connection working in both directions’.
For the importance of polar contrasts in early Greek thinking, and thus for
the traditional background of Heraclitus' doctrine of opposites, see above
all H. Frankel: ‘qualities can only be conceived together with their
opposites', Dichtung und Philosophie, p. 77, and passim; cf. the summary
pp. 657f.
See ‘the name of Dike’ in LXIX (D. 23) and ‘the name of Zeus’ in CXVIII
(D. 32). There is a general reference to the ways in which deity (or per-
haps fire) ‘is named’ (onomazetat) in CXXIII (D. 67).
See Parmenides fr. 1.38, 53; 9.1; 19.3. For the influence of this Eleatic
theory of names, see my article on the Cratylus in Exegesis and Argument,
Studies... Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Van Gorcum, 1973), рр. 154—7.
326
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
Notes to pages 201—210
For the Aeschylean passages, see Kirk, p. 119.
In rendering harmonié as 'structure' I am encouraged by the example of
Edward Hussey, The Presocratics, pp. 43f., who translates LXXX as ‘Latent
structure is master of obvious structure' (p. 35).
This is at least a reasonable possibility. See the reference above in n. 259.
Unfortunately, the later story that the cosmic music, inaudible to everyone
else, was heard by Pythagoras alone, cannot be counted as historical
evidence.
There are also mythic precedents for this notion, for example in Hesiod's
claim that Tartarus is as far below the earth as the earth is below heaven:
nine days' fall for a brazen anvil (Theogony 720ff.). But such measures,
with their picturesque and anecdotal quality, belong to an essentially dif-
ferent, pre-geometric and pre-scientific world view.
The literary procedure is thus the same as in IV (D. 17) above, p. 108.
See the passage from Solon's praise of Lawfulness (Eunomié), ‘who makes
crooked dikai straight апа... stops the wrath of grievous Strife (Eris)’, in
fr. 3.36 above, p. 180.
Works and Days 11—26. An Homeric allusion is of course compatible with
the biographical fact (which seems to me certain) that Hesiod is here cor-
recting the genealogy which he himself had given earlier at Theogony 225,
where he followed Homer in recognizing only evil Eris.
Diels’ emendation chreon is not a happy one, despite its success with later
editors. The reading kat’ erin kai chreón (without even so much asa te
before ka?) is very clumsy Greek for kat’ erin kai kata chreón ‘according
to conflict and according to what is right (and necessary)’; I cannot believe
that Heraclitus penned this phrase. The rhythm of the clause, built around
panta kat’ erin, preceded by kai ginomena and followed by kai... , leads
us to expect another participle in the middle voice at the end, which is just
what the manuscripts provide. Despite the feeble support some editors
find in a battered papyrus of Philodemus (see Kirk, pp. 238ff.; Marcovich,
p. 132), there is really no justification for Diels’ reading beyond the wish
to find an exact echo of Anaximander’s wording in LXXXII. Of the
emendations suggested, Bywater’s krinomena is by far the best, since it
provides us with the needed middle participle and one with a real point:
‘all things are both generated and judged (or selected) according to con-
flict’. Strife would thus appear (not only as begetter but also) as judge or
magistrate, in the role we find Time playing in Solon and Anaximander.
Attractive as this reading is, it is too tendentious to be admitted into the
text, as Bywater himself recognized.
Several commentators compare Pindar’s famous phrase nomos ho panton
basileus ‘custom, the king of all, both mortals and immortals’ (fr. 153
Bowra), which may have been influenced by Heraclitus’ wording.
See, e.g., Iliad XIII.244: deiknys séma brotoisin ‘showing a sign to mortals’
(cited by Kirk, p. 247n.). The verb can also be understood as a synonym
for epoiése in the next clause, as Marcovich and others assume. But that
would not explain why Heraclitus uses both verbs.
Gigon, Untersuchungen, p. 119, followed by Marcovich (p. 147) and others.
Diskin Clay suggests to me an alternative version: battle shows the differ-
ence between men and gods by revealing the mortality of the former; gods
may be wounded, but not killed (as in the case of Aphrodite and Ares in
Iliad V).
See the different and equally arbitrary inferences drawn on this score by
Plutarch, Clement and modern scholars in Marcovich, p. 401.
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
Notes to pages 211—214 327
For the background of this distinction between divine knowledge апа
human guesswork in early Greek poetry, see J. Mansfeld, Die Offenbarung
des Parmenides, pp. 4—11.
Note that gindskei ‘recognize’, which normally has a strong positive value
for Heraclitus, is here used ironically for the failure of genuine cognition.
So Wiese (pp. 214f.), who reads apistiéi in the dative and translates:
‘aufgrund seiner Unglaublichkeit'. As he points out (p. 217), Plutarch's
understanding of LXXXVI (D. 86) is a better clue to the original meaning
than the gnostic interpretation given by Clement.
I hesitate to change the manuscript reading of apistié to the dative (as
most editors do), since that obliges us to provide an unspecified subject for
‘it escapes being recognized’. In this form, and taking apistié as ‘incredulity’,
LXXXVI becomes an uninteresting repetition of VII (D. 18).
Clement cites these words immediately after LXXXV, introducing them
with the phrase kai mentoi kai ‘and furthermore’ (DK ‘aber freilich"),
which were formerly ascribed to Heraclitus; thus LXXXV and LXXXVII
were regarded as the continuous text of a single fragment (D. 28). Recent
discussions agree that the phrase just quoted is Clement’s device for joining
the two citations, whether or not they belonged together in Heraclitus’
text. (See Marcovich, p. 75, and above all Wiese, p. 193.) Bollack—Wismann,
who follow Reinhardt in omitting kai mento: kai, still print the two sen-
tences together as a single fragment. With Marcovich, I prefer to leave this
question open.
So Gigon, Untersuchungen, p. 128; Marcovich, pp. 76f.
Marcovich, pp. 407ff. lists quotations of this fragment by ten or twelve dif-
ferent authors, from Strabo to Julian. It is reflected in the Hellenistic
stories of the death of Heraclitus covered with cow-dung in D.L. IX.3—4.
There is a radical incompatibility between Heraclitus' attitude to the
corpse and the frame of mind revealed in the elaborate burial arrangements
for the bodies interred in those South Italian graves where the ‘Orphic’
gold tablets were found. See the reference below, n. 385.
*Suddenly I was asleep, I had fallen into that deep slumber in which are
opened to us a return to childhood, the recapture of past years ... the
transmigration of the soul, the evoking of the dead . . . all those mysteries
which we imagine ourselves not to know and into which we are in reality
initiated almost every night, as we are into the other great mystery of
annihilation and resurrection’ Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, tr.
Moncrieff, Vol. II, pp. 165f. (= A la recherche du temps perdu, Ed. Pléiade,
I, 819f.).
The lexicon cites no parallel use of the middle voice of hapto to mean
‘kindle’, except for a highly artificial Hellenistic verse from Callimachus
(Hymn to Artemis 116). Normally the middle is passive in this use, which
would give the sense: ‘a man in the night ts kindled as a light for himself’.
As secondary reading or hint, this construction answers exactly to the pass-
ive form aposbestheis ‘when he is quenched’.
An older parallel for the middle of haptó with accusative object is Od.
X1.278, where the wife-mother of Oedipus hangs herself by ‘fastening [to
herself] a noose' (hapsamené brochon). This suggests a third construal of
the phrase in XC: ‘fastening to himself a light’; which would explain the
dative pronoun (heautói) and anticipate the sense of haptetai in the sequel.
This point was rightly seen but overstated by the commentator whose gloss
apothanón 'having died' was later introduced here into the text. The correct
text was restored by Wilamowitz, accepted by DK and Marcovich.
328
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
Notes to pages 215—227
Pindar fr. 116 Bowra. Cf. Rohde, Psyche (English tr.), p. 415. There may
be some secondary allusion in XC to the outward resemblance between
sleep and death.
See Kirk and Raven, p. 208, and other passages cited by Marcovich, p.
245. This physical theory of sleep is developed in the Stoic commentary in
Sextus (DK 22.A 16, 129), translated in Appendix IIB.
Compare the paraphrase of XCII by Numenius (in D. 77): ‘We live their
death and they [sc. the psychai] live our death.’
Compare Xenophanes A 12 (Aristotle, Rhetoric 11.23, 1399b5): *Xeno-
phanes said that those who claim the gods were born are just as impious as
those who say they die. For in both cases it follows that at some time the
gods are not.' What is new in Xenophanes' assertion is the attack on divine
genealogies such as Hesiod's Theogony; what is taken for granted is that it
is sacrilege to speak of a god's death.
Hat. 11.61; cf. 11.86.2, 132.2 and 170.1.
Fr. 112.4. For the ‘startling’ and ‘unique’ character of this claim see Zuntz,
pp. 190f.
See Zuntz, p. 301 (Tablet A1, verse 8) and p. 329 (Tablet A4, verse 4); pub-
lished again by G.P. Carratelli, La Parola del Passato 29 (1974), 116. The
tablets themselves belong to the fourth century, but their text is probably
older than Empedocles.
For the textual corruption at the beginning of XCIII, see note on the text
above, p. 70.
As Plato and Plutarch put it, echoing something Heraclitus must have said.
See above on LI (D. 91).
In addition to Tablets B1 and B2 in Zuntz, pp. 359ff., see also the new
text in Carratelli (1974), p. 111, cited in n. 296.
This old view of the continuity of life is expressed in a recent text from an
American Indian culture: ‘The life cycle of the Creation is endless. We
watch the seasons come and go, life into life forever. The child becomes
parent who then becomes our respected elder. Life is so sacred, it is good
to be a part of all this.’ (From an Indian poster published by Akwesasne
Notes, Mohawk Nation, Rooseveltown, N.Y.)
No definite form is preserved through elemental transformation unless one
posits some microstructures common to water and earth, as in ancient
atomism and in modern chemistry, but not in the physics of Heraclitus.
For the imagery, and I suspect for the deeper thought as well, compare
Plato, Laws X.903—4, where the divine player or petteutés (903D6), called
the *king' (904A6), places human souls in the position for a rebirth that is
appropriate to their character. (The verb for ‘transpositions’ of souls is
metatithenai at 903D6, metapesonta at 904D1, metebalen at 90407, etc.)
That mysterious Platonic passage is literally haunted with Heraclitean
reminiscences. In addition to those just mentioned, see the echo of CXIV
(D. 119) at 903D7, XCVI (D. 25) at 903E1, and probably CXXIV (D. 10)
in ‘many from one and one from many’ at 903E6f. The ‘ensouled
(empsy chon) water’ which comes from fire at 903E6 is almost certainly an
echo of passages like XXXVIII (D. 31A), XL (D. 90), and CII (D. 36).
It is difficult to explain Plato's choice of the term petteutés except on
the assumption that he understood the pessoi-game of XCIV in the way
suggested, as a rule-like series of transpositions between the living and the
dead according to some pattern of cosmic order. Despite differences in
physical and psychological doctrine, Plato here, like Heraclitus, is attempt-
ing to construct a ‘scientific eschatology’ in which ‘the next world is simply
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
Notes to pages 228—234 329
the physical universe’; see T,J. Saunders, ‘Penology and eschatology in
Plato’s Timaeus and Laws’, Classical Quarterly 67 (1973), 232—44,
especially pp. 237f. and 241ff.
On this point, but not in the detail of their interpretation, I follow Bollack-
Wismann, p. 183.
See H. Frankel, ‘Heraclitus on the notion of a generation’, AJP 59 (1938),
89—91, followed by Kirk, 298f. The erroneous view recurs in Marcovich
(pp. 556ff.) and Bollack-Wismann (p. 183).
See the citation in DK A 19 and Marcovich, p. 552. A defense of this view
can scarcely be supported by the quicksand of a passage in Aetius, cited by
Diels as A 18 and by Marcovich as 108c. Aetius is our most unreliable
doxographer; and here he explicitly refers to Heraclitus in connection with
a Stoic view of the periods in human life.
See Laws VI.772D—E for the wider interval; IV. 721A and VI.785B for
the narrower one.
J.K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage (Oxford, 1964), pp. 83ff.
‘When the father dies, it is as if he were still alive, for he has left a copy of
himself behind him’ (Ecclesiasticus 30.4).
LSJ lists two epigraphical occurrences of moros for a measure of land. In
Herodotean prose, where the word occurs eight times, it always signifies a
violent death. A ninth occurrence in Herodotus, in the hexameter verse of
an oracle at IX.43.2, has the Homeric sense of ‘destiny’ or ‘allotted portion
(of life)’.
For the threat of lying in the borboros or mire see Phaedo 69C6 with
Burnet’s note. For the standard mystic promise of bliss see quotations on
р. 263; cf. L.R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality
(Oxford, 1921), pp. 373—80.
In addition to the standardized praise of the dead in Athenian funeral
orations, compare the fate of Tellus the Athenian, ‘most fortunate of men’
according to Solon, ‘whose end of life was most brilliant’, since he fell in
battle after having routed the enemy, and who (like the victors at Mara-
thon) received not only a public funeral but the signal honor of being
buried on the spot of his triumphant death (Hdt. 1.30.5). Solon’s second
story in the same context, concerning the glorious (though not military)
death of Cleobis and Biton, by which the god showed that ‘it is better for
a man to be dead than to live’, can also be read as a partial commentary
on XCVI.
The words ‘or rather, to rest’, inserted after ‘they want to have their
moro?’ in the citation of XCVIII, must belong to Clement, not to Heracli-
tus. But Clement seems to have taken the term from another Heraclitean
text (LII, D. 84A); as Walter Burkert says, ‘Clemens hat offensichtlich
Heraklit mit Heraklit interpoliert'. See the article cited above, n. 202.
The alternative destinies of imperishable fame (kleos aphthiton) or long
lifetime (aión) are first announced at Л. 1X.410—16. The passage at
XVIII.98 —126, which expresses Achilles' decisive choice, also contains the
curse on ‘strife’ (eris, in verse 107), alluded to by Heraclitus in LXXXI
(D. A22).
The words and imagery of these Homeric passages seem to be echoed in
many of the fragments. Compare the sweetness of wrath at Л. XVIII.109f.
with CV (D. 85). At XVIIL95 Thetis addresses her son as ókymoros 'early-
doomed’; cf. moros in XCVI and XCVIII. The heroic destiny or moira
(suggested in XCVI) is mentioned at XVIII.120, where Achilles is compar-
ing his lot to that of Heracles. ‘Everflowing fame’ (kleos aenaon) in XCVII
330
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
Notes to pages 234—240
is a Heraclitean variant on ‘imperishable fame’ (kleos aphthiton) at Il.
IX.413 — one of those traditional ‘formulae’ which in fact occurs nowhere
else in the extant epic!
Simonides fr. 4 Bergk = D.L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, 1962),
531. The phrase 'everflowing fame' seems to occur nowhere else in Greek
literature. If we could believe that Heraclitus completed his book after
480 B.C. (which is the earliest possible date for Simonides' poem), he
might be alluding here to Simonides' praise of those who had fallen at
Thermopylae. But the date is late for Heraclitus. Since so much archaic
Greek poetry has been lost, it seems likely that Heraclitus and Simonides
are echoing some earlier use of the phrase. Or perhaps each one indepen-
dently chose the epithet aenaos ‘everflowing’ for immortal fame, because
of its phonetic associations with the idea ‘ever renewed’ or ‘forever young’
(aei neos). Compare aeinaos timd ‘everflowing (i.e. ever new) honor’ in
Pindar, Olympian 14.12, generally dated to 476 B.C. It is also possible
that both Pindar and Simonides were influenced by the language of
Heraclitus.
For the construction of morous genesthai as final-consecutive after
kataleipó, cf. Od. 11.271: Aegisthus left the bard on the island ‘to become
a prey for birds’ (kallipen . . . kyrma genesthat).
See text Al from the gold tablets, discussed in Zuntz, pp. 320ff.
The authenticity of peras in XCIX seems confirmed by the fact that in
parallel texts about the beginning and the end of the circle, the word for
end point is not peras but teleuté. See passages from Hermippus (fr. 4)
and three Hippocratic treatises cited by Kirk, pp. 113f.
For the discussion by G.S. Kirk, ‘Heraclitus and death in battle’, see com-
mentary on CIX (D. 118).
CI is quoted only once, in Stobaeus, who assigns it to ‘Socrates’. Since it
follows immediately upon XXX (D. 114), cited under the title ‘Heraclitus’,
most editors have attributed this quotation to him. It was omitted by
Bywater and recently questioned by Marcovich (p. 569).
See De Anima 1.2, 404b29 and 1.4, 408b33ff. The commentators identify
the view as that of Xenocrates. See Xenocrates, frs. 60—5, ed. R. Heinze.
Could the title ‘Socrates’ in Stobaeus be a mistake for ‘Xenocrates’? Cf.
West, р. 128, n. 3.
See citations in Walzer under fr. 115; also Marcovich, p. 569. Gigon, Unter-
suchungen, p. 105, conjectures that ‘the measure of the soul augments
itself . . . through continuous nourishment from the blood’.
This holds also for the dubious XLI (D. 76) in its most respectable form,
that of Plutarch: ‘death of fire is birth for air and death of air is birth for
water’. If XLI is not genuine, Plutarch (unlike Maximus) has at least per-
ceived and preserved the Heraclitean association of death with the down-
ward path.
See Anaximenes A 7.3, Anaxagoras A 42.2 and B 15—16, and above, p.
137.
For a few protests against the misinterpretation of psyche as fire see Rein-
hardt, Parmenides, p. 194, followed by Nestle in Zeller-Nestle, p. 816n.
Similarly Gigon, Untersuchungen, p. 110 (*the soul must be conceived as
air’), and Bollack-Wismann, who translate psychai by ‘souffles’ (pp. 88,
145f.).
See Aetius in DK 22.A 15; Philo, de aet. mundi 111 in Marcovich, p. 353.
We can ignore Macrobius (in DK ibid.), whose report that the soul is ‘a
spark of stellar essence' might be a distorted version of CIX (D. 118). Even
less reliable is the excerpt from Aetius that assigns a fiery soul to ‘Par-
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
338
334
335
336
387
Notes to pages 240—245 331
menides and Hippasus and Heraclitus’ (Theodoretus in DK 18.A 9 =
Marcovich 66f4, p. 358).
See Anaximenes A 23 and B 2; cf. the passages from Diogenes and Aris-
tophanes cited p. 247 with n. 350.
Gigon (Untersuchungen, p. 103) also connects CIII with CII.
For the elemental reading see Theophrastus in D.L. IX.8—9 (see
Appendix IIA), with other texts in Kirk, pp. 107f. An upward and down-
ward path for the psyche is hinted at in Plato (see especially Gorgias 493A)
and becomes dominant in Neoplatonic commentary. Cf. Plotinus’ preface
to the citation of LII—LIII (D. 84A—B; full text in Marcovich, p. 301).
Negative potentialities are alluded to in CXXI (D. 66), where fire appears
as universal judge and executioner. But the connotations there are not
wholly negative, as we see from the parallel to Justice in LXXXVII (D.
28B).
Cf. the epigram cited at Hdt. V.77.4 (= Simonides fr. 100 Diehl), with
parallels in Marcovich, p. 532.
Parmenides, p. 196, n. 2; supported by parallels in Marcovich, p. 383 (note
4 to text al). Marcovich suggests (p. 386) that the phrase ‘to fight against
thy mos was also proverbial, but the parallels he cites (p. 383, note 1)
may all be influenced by Heraclitus. The fragment was a famous one:
answered by Democritus (fr. 236), cited three times by Aristotle, and as
often by Plutarch. It is scarcely surprising if we find echoes of it in
Euripides and Plato. Cf. Diels, Herakleitos? , p. xii: ‘Euripides is full of
«the impact of Heraclitus, and Plato .. . owes him more than he later
realized.’
Burnet, p. 140 n. 2, followed by others cited in Marcovich, pp. 386f.
Republic 375B and Laws 863B, cited by Marcovich in this connection (p.
383, note 1 to al).
Out of 19 occurrences of thymos, Powell's Lexicon classifies 6 as meaning
‘anger’, 5 as ‘courage’, and 2 as ‘spirit’ with a martial connotation. Of the
6 remaining examples, 3 employ thymos in a fixed formula for ‘heed’ or
‘attention’ which reflects the intellectual range of the word in Homer. In
only 3 out of 19 examples does Powell note a generalized, neutral sense of
‘desire’; and in none of these is there any special reference to sensual desires
that might be regarded as a weakening or softening of the spirit. (The three
occurrences in question are I.1.4 ‘they bought those wares of which they
had most thymos’; 11.129.2 ‘he satisfied the thymos of the man who com-
plained of his decision by giving him something else’; VIII.116.2 ‘he had a
thymos to behold the war'. And the cognate verb thymoumai, which
occurs 10 times in Herodotus, always means ‘to be angry’. The verb ‘to
desire’ in Herodotus is epithy mein, as in Democritus fr. 70. The Platonic
contrast between thymos and epithy mia is thus already implicit in the
Ionic use of the two corresponding verbs.
For further support for this interpretation see W.J. Verdenius, ‘A
psychological statement of Heraclitus’, Mnemosyne Series 3, Vol 11
(1943), 115—21.
Cf. Bollack-Wismann, p. 254, who point to the etymological link between
thymos and anathy miasis. Similarly Verdenius in the article cited in the
preceding note.
Bollack-Wismann, p. 328, who continue: 'L'homme est conduit, parce
qu'il n'est pas en état de se conduire. Il est plutót entrainé qu'il n'est
guidé, par un enfant, qui, à ses cótés, fait figure d'adulte, à cause duquel
il régresse, par contraste, dans l'áge ot l'on ne sait pas méme marcher.'
Thus Kirk (p. 340), followed by Marcovich (p. 360), dismisses D. 77 as
332
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
Notes to pages 245—246
‘simply a reworking of fr. 36 [CII] and possibly of fr. 117 [CVI] '. See,
contra, Guthrie’s defense of CVIII (1, 433, with note 4), following Gigon
(Untersuchungen, p. 109).
This is the second half of D. 77, given by Marcovich as 4744.
Since in CVIII we are dealing with a paraphrase at second hand, it seems
pointless to *correct' the text of Porphyry (as Diels and others have done)
in order to avoid a contradiction with CII (D. 36). It looks rather as if
Numenius wanted to replace the literal sense of CII (‘it is death for souls
to become water’) with an allegorical view, according to which Heraclitus
meant not physical death but the sensual delight of the soul in descending
into bodily form.
See texts 68а1, a2, аЗ, a4, a8, and a9 in Marcovich, рр. 371—4. We may
add a second Plutarch citation if Sieveking's likely correction augé for
hauté is accepted in a5. This is also the form of the quotation in Marsilio
Ficino (ibid. a12).
So in Clement (Marcovich a7), and also once in Plutarch (a6) if Marco-
vich's correction there is accepted.
So in Aristides (Marcovich а10) and Porphyry (all). This is rendered as
lux a in Ficino and in the Latin translation of Galen in Marcovich, note
5 to a9.
This version in Porphyry (bl) must be regarded as an abbreviation of the
fuller text (including auge) implied by his citation in all. The short version
is attested in Synesius (b2), Eustathius (b3), and other Byzantine authors
(b4, b>).
The reading aué (for augé) is attested, apparently for the first time, in two
corrections added by a later hand (A2) in an inferior fourteenth-century
manuscript (A) of Stobaeus, which according to Hense (prolegomena, pp.
XXXVI-XXXVII, to Stobaei libri duo posteriores, Vol. I) is full of con-
jectures and mistaken ‘corrections’; in each case the better manuscripts
have augé. But aué appears again in the sixteenth-century edition of
Stobaeus by Trincavelli (for which see Hense, op. cit. p. XXXIII); it was
endorsed by Stephanus and has had a brilliant fortune ever since. In this
connection one may cite Sandys’ judgment on Stephanus: ‘In his recen-
sions of the Classics his alterations of the manuscript readings were
capricious and uncritical, and he is accordingly denounced with some
severity by Scaliger as a corrupter of ancient texts’ (A History of Classical
Scholarship ЇЇ (Cambridge, 1908), 176). It is not clear why his authority
has been so great among editors of Heraclitus.
Diels was right, therefore, finally to resist this Renaissance ‘correction’ and
to preserve the ancient text in his second edition of Heraclitus (1909) and
in the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, after having yielded to it in his first
edition (1901). Diels' virtuous example was unfortunately not followed by
Kranz, Walzer, or Marcovich, nor apparently by any modern editor except
Bollack-Wismann.
See texts аб and а? in Marcovich. (It may be noted that Stobaeus cites CVI
and CIX, D. 117—18, side by side.) This construal (*dry soul") underlies
the variant (3) represented in Porphyry and later authors. The construction
of ‘dry’ with ‘soul’ is attested in a whether or not one accepts Marcovich's
restoration of augé (as I do); it is similarly presupposed in a5 (where there
is accordingly no need of adding sophótaté as Marcovich suggests).
See text all in Marcovich (p. 374): ‘When the soul succeeds in practicing
the withdrawal from Nature (i.e. from the bodily realm of generation and
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
Notes to pages 247—257 333
corruption), it becomes a dry beam of light (augé xéra), free from cloud
and shadow; for it is moisture that gives rise to cloud in the air, but dry-
ness produces from vapor a dry beam of light’ (Sent. ad intellig. ducentes
c. 29.3 = p. 15 Mommert).
Cf. Bollack-Wismann, p. 325. The most interesting consequence of the syn-
tactic ambiguity is that it permits us to read the sentence both backwards
and forwards, taking first psyché and then augé as subject (or topic): (1)
‘the soul which is wisest and best is dry, (and is) a beam of light’, and (2)
‘a beam of light when dry (in a sky free of all humidity) is soul in its
wisest and best condition’. The sentence is, in effect, a statement of
identity.
See passages from Homer and Hesiod cited in Anaximander, pp. 140ff.
For Anaxagoras the contrast between ‘moist and dry, and hot and cold,
and bright and dark’ in fr. 4 seems to correspond to the opposition of
aithér and aér in frs. 1 and 2.
Theophrastus, De Sensibus 44, in DK 64.A 19. This is the view mocked by
Aristophanes in the basket scene from the Clouds, where the unusual word
ikmas recurs (verse 233).
G.S. Kirk, ‘Heraclitus and death in battle: Fr. 24D’, AJP 70 (1949), 389f.
Ibid. p. 392.
This is not strictly compatible with Kirk’s own statement that the psyche
is ‘made of fire, or a form of fire’, loc. cit. p. 387: the soul must be made
of water as well, if it can be described as a mixture of the two.
See D.L. IX.9—10, in Appendix ПА. Cf. Aetius in DK A 11—12. This is
essentially the explanation of ‘dry beam of light’ given by Porphyry (cited
above іп n. 347). The less reliable doxography also explains préstér or
lightning storm by ‘the conflagration and quenching of clouds’ (Aetius in
DK A 14); which corresponds roughly to what we find in D.L.
Compare Aristotle’s view of the effect produced on a man’s prosperity or
‘happiness’ (eudaimonia) by events that befall his family after his death,
according to popular belief: *it would be strange if there was no connection
between the children and the parents [who are dead] , at least for some
time’ (Nicomachean Ethics 1.10, 1100a29f.).
Pensées no. 265.
Spinoza, Ethics, Scholium to V.23.
Even the verb epanistasthai ‘to rise up’ (which seems to be guaranteed as
the basis of Hippolytus’ mention of resurrection, anastasis) is puzzling in
this form, since in Hdt. it always means ‘to rise in revolt against’ (22
occurrences). The shorter form anistasthai would give the right sense; per-
haps the prefix ep- is part of the textual corruption.
Some scholars deny any relation between CXI and CXII. Thus Kirk (p.
235n., followed by Marcovich, pp. 419f.) prefers to connect the smoke of
CXII (D. 7) with the incense of CXXIII (D. 67).
Besides the context of CXII (De Sensu 5.443222), see evidence from
Anaxagoras and Hippocratic treatises in Kirk, AJP (1949), 388; also
Timaeus 66D—E.
To be consistent, Kirk and Marcovich should regard CXII merely as a de-
formed echo of CXXIII; it is unlikely that Heraclitus would have repeated
himself in this way, if CXII contains no independent thought.
On this assumption, Aristotle's reference to ‘nostrils’ in CXII is part of his
own rewording, as is the phrase panta ta onta ‘all beings’. Heraclitus would
have spoken only of smell (osmé), as in CXI. Aristotle's mention of smoke
334
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
Notes to pages 257—260
(kapnos), on the other hand, may well be authentic; this could be the
Heraclitean word rendered by anathy miasis in Plutarch, Aristotle, and
others. Cf. CXIIIB (D. 12).
Cratylus 403A6 reports this as the common view. Cf. Bollack-Wismann,
. 282f.
The Face on the Moon 942F (tr. H. Cherniss in Loeb Moralia XII), with
Cherniss’ note on p. 195.
The thought appealed to Yeats: ‘it is a ghost’s right, / His element is so
fine / Being sharpened by his death, / To drink from the wine-breath /
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine’.
CXIIIB may be a citation from Cleanthes' four volumes of commentary on
Heraclitus, but more probably from his two volumes on Zeno's natural
philosophy (D.L. VIII.174). The last sentence in CXIIIB (‘But souls too
are exhaled from moisture") has sometimes been taken as part of Heraclitus'
text (e.g. by Diels). Both style and diction are distinctly doxographic, how-
ever; and Bywater, Kirk, and Marcovich are surely right to include this in
Cleanthes' exegesis.
This is explicit in Cleanthes and implied by Aristotle, whose text (CXIIIA
= De An. 405a25ff.) continues: ‘And <according to Heraclitus? what is
in motion is known by what is in motion <namely, by the psyche as an
everflowing exhalation>. For he like most theorists thought that reality
(ta onta) was in motion <and hence that the soul as cognitive principle
must be so likewise>.’
See texts on p. 247, with n. 350.
See Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus 44b36ff. An archaic use of ‘exhale’ in
English recalls this old physiological sense: ‘of animal fluids: to ooze
through a membrane or blood-vessel’ (The Shorter Oxford English Dic-
tionary).
Von Arnim I, no. 128. The two texts are quoted together by Eusebius, in
Diels, Doxographi graeci, pp. 470f.
So Walzer, p. 54 n. 2 (following Gigon), who cites von Arnim I, no. 140;
cf. von Arnim II, 778, 781—883. The physiological notion of anathymiasis
is ascribed to Heraclitus himself by Gigon (Untersuchungen, pp. 104f.) and
Bollack-Wismann, p. 88.
It would be unwise to rely upon Aetius (DK A 15; cf. A 18), who simply
assigns the Stoic view to Heraclitus. The Stoic doctrine may have been
prepared (or reflected?) in the views of ‘some among those who follow
Heraclitus’ (tines tön Hérakleizontón) that anathymiasis occurs within the
body just as it does within the universe, so that odors in urine might be
produced by the exhalation from food (Pseudo-Aristotle, Problemata
XIII.6, 9082330, cited by Gigon, Untersuchungen, p. 106). These are pre-
sumably the same theorists referred to in the same terms at Problemata
XXIII.30, 934b34, where their doctrine is ‘that stones and earth are formed
from fresh water as it dries and hardens, while the sun is produced by evap-
oration (anathymiasthai) from the sea’ (cited in Mondolfo-Taran, Eraclito.
Testimonianze e Imitazioni (Florence, 1972), p. 120). These ‘Heracliteans’
have obviously gone far beyond their master in working out a detailed
physical theory, even if we credit him with all the doctrine in the Theo-
phrastean doxography.
This expression is puzzling, unless we compare the Theophrastean doxo-
graphy: ‘from water the rest arise, since he (Heraclitus) traces almost
everything back to the anathymiasis from the sea’ (D.L. IX.9; see
Appendix IIA). Aristotle seems to take for granted some such doxography.
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
Notes to pages 260—264 335
Was part of Theophrastus’ work in existence before the De Anima was
written?
Some editors read nearai ‘young’ (for noerai ‘intelligent’): the fragment
will then show that souls are always being generated anew (nearai), as the
waters are continually flowing on. But this emendation does not fit the
larger context, since we then lose the connection with perception in what
precedes and follows.
For a recent discussion that emphasizes the impact of Heraclitus on
Cleanthes see A.A. Long, ‘Heraclitus and Stoicism’, in Philosophia (Year-
book of the Research Center for Greek Philosophy at the Academy of
Athens), 1975—76, pp. 133—53.
Ethos ‘character’ is closely related to ethos ‘custom, habit’. In the plural
éthos too can refer to customs or customary haunts. But in CXIV (as in
Empedocles frs. 17.28 and 110.5, in other poets, and in Aristotle) éthos
means very much what we understand by ‘character’: the customary pat-
tern of choice and behavior distinctive of an individual or a given type.
Thus in LV (D. 78) human ethos is contrasted with a divine nature.
Cf. Snell, Scenes from Greek Drama (University of California Press, 1964),
p. 69: ‘The goddesses become symbols of different ways of life, of differ-
ent bioi.’ Snell notices earlier steps towards a ‘symbolic’ interpretation of
the gods in Empedocles and Sophocles. Here as elsewhere Heraclitus antici-
pates the new spiritual world of the late fifth century.
For a similar view of CXIV, see W.J. Verdenius, ‘Some aspects of Heraclitus’
anthropology’, in Images of Man... Studia G. Verbeke dicta (Leuven,
1976), p. 34.
So Marcovich (p. 465), following Reinhardt and Wiese. What they have
shown is that the five words in the list might be an addition by Clement,
not that they are.
Compare M.P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipzig, 1906), p. 275. Rein-
hardt suggested that the Lénai are conceived here as a female thiasos or
sacred band, the ritual counterpart to the mythical Maenads (*Nachlass'
No. 48, in Wiese, p. 315).
See p. 111 in the publication by Carratelli cited above, n. 296.
If Clement has added anything of his own to the list, it is likely to be
these two initial words. But for a good case in favor of ascribing all five
words to Heraclitus, and for the importance of a reference here to night,
see Bollack-Wismann, pp. 92—4.
Homeric Hy mn to Demeter 480—2. Heraclitus may be alluding to this old
formula, that the one who has no share (ammoros) in the rite will not
receive his portion (aisa) of good things hereafter, in his own promise that
great dooms (moroi) will receive greater shares or destinies (mozrai) in
XCVI (D. 25).
Pindar fr. 121 Bowra; Sophocles fr. 753 Nauck, with other passages cited
on Hymn to Demeter 480—2 by Allen-Sikes and in the recent commentary
of N.J. Richardson (Oxford, 1974).
See Zuntz, Persephone, pp. 288—92 for a description of the graves. In at
least one case, ‘the dead тап... must have been worshipped as a hero’
(Zuntz, p. 289, following Cavallari).
I see no evidence for Marcovich’s view (p. 253) that the identification of
Hades and Dionysus is presupposed as ‘a commonly accepted and known
truth’. Herodotus reports it as a peculiarity of the Egyptian religion that
they regard Dionysus (i.e. Osiris) as king of the dead (11.123.1). The sar-
336
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
897
Notes to pages 264—270
casm of CXVI implies that men do not recognize the appropriateness of
their phallic ritual, which lies precisely in this identification.
So Gigon, Untersuchungen, pp. 91f.
For the role of the phallic procession in the cult of Dionysus see Hdt.
1I.48—9; cf. the rural Attic Dionysia in Aristophanes, Acharnians 237ff.,
where a virgin carrying the sacred basket is followed by two slaves holding
up a phallus (a large wooden pole topped by a leather penis, according to
the scholiast); Dikaiopolis brings up the rear singing the phallic song (to
phallikon) to Dionysus, and repeatedly reminding the slaves that the
phallus must be held erect. For the official Athenian state ceremony, a
colony was expected to contribute a phallus for its mother city. See van
Leeuwen on Acharnians 248, and Meiggs and Lewis, A Selection of Greek
Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, 1969), No. 49, p. 129,1. 13. Further
details on phallophoria in Farnell, Cults of the Greek City States V, 197
and 243 (where Plate XXXIVb shows a Hellenistic relief with a phallus in
a basket); also Deubner, Attische Feste, pp. 135f. and 141.
See Nilsson, cited above, n. 380; similarly Farnell, V. 208. The older view
of the Lenaia as a wine festival is maintained by Verdenius in Mnemosyne
(1959), 297.
Cf. Verdenius (Mnemosyne (1959), 297): 'the god of wine and life, whose
rites are so “utterly unlike Hades" (anaidestata)'. Similarly Bollack-
Wismann, p. 97.
I see no merit to the suggestion of Lesky, adopted by Marcovich (p.
253), that in reading the initial ‘if’-clause we emphasize the negation rather
than the name of the god, understanding ‘If they did not perform these
rites (they would be acting irreverently)’, instead of ‘If it were not Diony-
sus for whom they perform them.’ The strong position of ‘Dionysus’ at
beginning and end tells against this reading, which also makes the para-
doxical identification with Hades irrelevant. The thought that the omission
of a ritual would show a lack of reverence is more banal than what we
expect from Heraclitus; and the verb eirgastai ‘perform’ would be a curious
one to express the omission of an action.
Cf. the dual construction of aei ‘forever’ in I, and én aei (‘existed forever’
and ‘was forever fire’) in XXXVII (D. 30); also the multiple syntax of
mounon ‘only’ in CXVIII.
For the role of pig's blood in the Apolline purification ritual, see Farnell,
Cults IV, 303f.
For the influence of Xenophanes on Heraclitus, see Gigon, Untersuchungen,
esp. p. 132. The remark on heroes in CXVII seems to have no precedent in
Xenophanes and probably reflects Heraclitus’ own view of superior souls
as 'guardians' (CX, D. 63).
CXVIII is unique in presenting a direct contradiction, whereas other Herac-
litean paradoxes assert the identity of contraries (like Day and Night in
XIX, D. 57) or ascribe them to a common subject (as in CXXIII, D. 67).
The contradictory form of CXVIII is imitated in the paraphrase that counts
as fragment 49a in Diels-Kranz. See Appendix I.
The same may be said for *men in love with wisdom' (philosophous andras)
in IX (D. 35), if the wording is authentic. In XXII (D. 56) and XXV (D.
129) wisdom is attributed, ironically, to Homer and Pythagoras.
One other construal is grammatically possible but unnatural and uninterest-
ing: ‘the one wise is the only thing to be both unwilling and willing . . . °.
Cf. Pherecydes of Syros, fr. 1, where four different non-standard forms of
the name are given.
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
Notes to pages 270—277 337
The etymological value of Zénos in CXVIII was recognized by Bernays and
many others. It has been denied by Gigon (Untersuchungen, p. 139), Kirk
(p. 392) and Marcovich (pp. 445f.) for reasons that do not seem cogent.
One would like to know the source of Aristotle's report (De Anima
405b27 = DK 38.A 10) that the theory that the soul is hot is supported by
an etymology of zén ‘to live’. Philoponus (in DK, loc. cit.) says the view
belongs to Heraclitus and derives zen from zein ‘to boil’. The etymology
fits Aristotle's account, but the attribution to Heraclitus must be wrong.
There could be a connection with other ‘Heraclitean’ citations in the
Problemata; see above, n. 372.
Physics 203b11 = DK 12.A 15. Anaximander's name is given in the next
sentence; and probably no one else would have said of to apeiron that ‘it
steers all things'.
Cf. Diogenes fr. 5: ‘all men are steered (kybernasthat) by the intelligent
Air, and it dominates them all...and it arranges all things'; and the same
thought (without the image of the helmsman) in Anaxagoras' description
of cosmic Intelligence (nous): *the finest of all things and the purest, it
possesses all cognition (gndmé) concerning everything . . . It dominates all
things that have life (psyché) апа... knows them all (panta egnó) . ..
Intelligence has set all things in order’ (panta diekosmése nous; fr. 12).
See on XL (D. 90), XLIV (D. 94), LXXXII (D. 80).
Vermächtnis, p. 66: if the sentence is authentic, ‘then the Church Fathers
were right, there is no helping it, Heraclitus was one of theirs'. Reinhardt's
case against CXXI (D. 66) was accepted by Kirk (pp. 359ff.); rejected by
Gigon (pp. 130f.), Marcovich (p. 435) and Bollack-Wismann (p. 218),
rightly in my opinion.
Compare the imagery of Time as judicial magistrate in Anaximander's frag-
ment and in Solon fr. 24.3 Diehl.
Unless ‘the death of fire’ is accepted as authentic in XLI (D. 76). Cf. also
the ‘blazing fire’ (pyrkaié) of CIV (D. 43).
Thus Helios is the divine spy in the Olympian adultery story, Od. VIII.
270ff. and 302. See other Homeric references to the all-seeing Sun and to
Zeus himself in this role in Kirk, p. 363, and Marcovich, p. 433. Hesiod’s
phrase about the all-seeing and all-knowing ‘eye of Zeus’ whose notice
nothing escapes (Erga 267f.) is often echoed in later poetry, with or with-
out reference to the sun. See Nauck, Tragicorum Fragmenta Adespota no.
485 and passim; cf. no. 421 for ‘the eye of Dike’; and no. 278 for lightning
(astrapé) in this role.
For the possibility that the conception of the sun as viceroy or steward of
the highest god (suggested by the repetition of the verb epitropeuein in
Plato's text at 412D8 and 413B5) goes back to Heraclitus himself, see
above, p. 156 on XLIIA (D. 100).
Thus for Anaxagoras nous is *present where everything is' (fr. 14); the
divine air of Diogenes ‘penetrates (aphichthai) to every thing and arranges
all and is present in every one' (fr. 5); Empedocles speaks of a god who is
‘holy intelligence (phrén) alone, rushing through the whole world-order
with rapid thoughts' (fr. 134).
Dynamis dia pantón diékousa (Cornutus), cited by Kirk (p. 362) ina
possible reminiscence of CXXI; there are many Stoic parallels.
I have added ‘and’ for each pair, in order to make the English readable.
The Greek consists of nine nouns, the first of which is distinguished by
the definite article.
LV—LVII (D. 78, 83, 79) and LXVIII (D. 102). Cf. CXVII (D. 5): men do
338
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
Notes to pages 277—285
not know what gods and heroes are like. In C (D. 24) there is a more
unusual parallel between gods and men: both agree in honoring those who
die in battle.
XCII (D. 62), with a comparable hint in LXXXIII (D. 53): War has shown
some as gods, others as men.
XXXIII (D. 93). Cf. the Sibyl in XXXIV (D. 92), where the reference to
the god may have been added by Plutarch.
CXIX—CXKXII (D. 64—6 and 16). Cf. aithrios Zeus ‘bright (fiery) Zeus’ in
XLV (D. 120).
For such particularized divinities cf. the daimén of CXIV (D. 119), ident-
ified with a man's character.
Chiastic grouping brings 'peace and satiety' together in the middle, with
the negative terms ‘war’ and ‘hunger’ at the extremes. The reversal of the
chiasm in the first group (where ‘day’ and ‘summer’ are the extremes),
may be only a stylistic variation; it may also reflect the relativity of positive
and negative evaluations in the context of total order.
See Diogenes fr. 3 cited above, n. 208.
See Frankel, Wege und Formen, p. 238.
For day and night see on XIX (D. 57); for the seasons, XLII (D. 100) and
commentary on XLIV—XLV (D. 94 and 120), with a cosmic analogue to
the seasons in XLIIIA (D. A13) and the ‘reversals’ of XXXVIII (D. 31A);
for satiety and hunger, LXVII (D. 111) and the related pair in CXX (D. 65).
For a survey of the proposed emendations see Kirk, pp. 191—7, and Marco-
vich's critical note on pp. 413f.
For this sense of hédoné see Anaxagoras fr. 4, Diogenes fr. 5, and other
passages in Kirk, p. 197, LSJ s.v. hédoné П.
Xenophanes fr. 38 is the earliest expression of a similar relativism: ‘if god
had not produced golden honey, they would have said figs were much
sweeter’. But Xenophanes refers to one extreme only, and Heraclitus’ com-
ment may be understood as a correction: neither figs nor honey would be
sweet at all if there were nothing bitter or sour.
See the text in Kirk, рр. 184 and 350, n. 1. Hippolytus clearly ‘implies
that the original arrangement was preserved in [his] source’, as Kirk
admits (p. 185). I see no reason why Hippolytus should mislead us on this,
or why he should himself be misled, as Kirk seems to suggest.
These translations of syllapsies may be influenced by the alternative read-
ing synapsies ‘contact’, ‘juncture’, even though this form is rejected in
most recent editions of the text.
Bollack-Wismann, pp. 82f., limit the text of CXXIV to this question and
answer, but without sufficient reason.
The verb diaidein occurs elsewhere only in the sense ‘to contend against in
singing’, ‘to compete in a singing context’. That sense is relevant here, as a
continuation of diapheromenon ‘quarrelling’. But most commentators
rightly assume that Heraclitus is exploiting the etymological contrast with
synaidein ‘to accompany in song’, ‘sing in agreement with’. Cf. ‘from notes
at variance (diapheromenón) comes the finest harmony’ in LXXV (D. 8),
which may be simply a paraphrase of CXXIV.
See especially Kirk, pp. 15, 169, 204, 208; and my discussion of harmonié
above, pp. 196ff.
See above, pp. 203f. Philolaus (fr. 6) uses as a technical term for
one of the fundamental musical ratios the word syllabé, a cognate of
syllapsies. In a musical context syllapsies would mean ‘notes taken
together’,
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
485
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
Notes to pages 285—292 339
The neuter piural form panta occurs as a constant theme throughout the
fragments: D. 1, 29, 41 (twice), 50, 64, 80, 90 (twice); it is also found in
D. 7,8, and 102, where the wording may not be authentic. In six or seven
cases the form is ambiguous between the neuter (‘all things’) and the mas-
culine (‘all persons’): D. 30, 53 (twice), 108, 113 and two occurrences in
D. 114. There are five unambiguous occurrences of the personal form in
D. 56, 114, 116, 121 and 129. By contrast, the neuter plural polla ‘many
things' occurs only once (D. 35) or twice (if one adds pleista *most things'
from D. 57); although the masculine form hoi polloi ‘most men’ occurs
with almost the same frequency as pantes ‘all men’: D. 2, 17, 29, 104.
So roughly Kirk, pp. 178f.
De Part. An. 645317 = DK 22.A 9.
D. 49a is listed as authentic by Bywater, Diels, Walzer, Snell and Bollack-
Wismann; rightly rejected by Kirk (pp. 373f.) and Marcovich (p. 211),
following Gigon. The reliability of this author (an allegorical commentator
on Homer named Heraclitus) as a source for the original text can be judged
by comparing his version of XCII (D. 62) with the literal quotation in
Hippolytus. See texts (a) and (bl) in Marcovich, p. 236.
For the Stoic definition of conceit or conjecture (oiésis, Lat. opinatio) asa
disease, see von Arnim III, pp. 103.6 and 104.35, cited by Deichgráber, p.
27. The second clause of D. 46 may be inspired by XVI (D. 107).
There is nothing Heraclitean in this view of the psyche. Both doctrine and
imagery come from Chrysippus, as Marcovich has shown (Phronesis II
(1966), 26f.).
If the context in Iamblichus is to be trusted, this one-word quotation must
belong with CXV —CXVII in the critique of conventional cult practices,
where Marcovich has placed it.
It seems likely, as some have suggested, that this ‘fragment’ is little more
than a reminiscence of LXIII (D. 49).
Marcovich and Bollack-Wismann have recently defended the authenticity
of this ‘quotation’, which seems to me patently forged (so likewise
Bywater, Wilamowitz, Walzer, Kirk).
Reading enantiotropés with DK. Hicks and Long read enantiodromias ‘by
the clash of opposing currents’ (Hicks).
This is the sense; but it is difficult to construe the text as it stands.
Unless ‘and souls are exhaled from moisture’ in the ancient commentary
on L (D. 12) is itself taken as a quotation from Heraclitus. But see above
on CXIIIB.
See Kirk, p. 276. If Heraclitus referred to a bowl of the sun, he may have
been alluding to the poetic conceit of Helios transported across the Ocean
each night in a golden bed, first attested in Mimnermus (fr. 10 Diehl = 12
West). The parallel in Stesichorus (fr. 6 Diehl = 185 Page) speaks of a
golden goblet or bowl (depas). Several recent commentators have assumed
some connection between Heraclitus’ ‘doctrine’ of scaphai or bowls and
this mythic theme. See Marcovich, p. 333, who rejects the connection.
But Heraclitus can scarcely have explained day by the bright exhalation,
night by the dark one, as Kirk points out (p. 272). This would be hard to
reconcile with the unity of day and night proclaimed in XIX (D. 57). And
XLVI (D. 99) seems precisely to deny that night is a positive reality.
‘He [sc. Xenophanes] said . . . that sun and stars arise from clouds’ (DK
21.A 32): ‘The sun arises each day from little fires gathering together...
the earth is being mixed with sea and in the course of time is being dis-
solved by the moist . . . all human beings will be destroyed when the earth
340 Notes to pages 292—300
collapses into the sea and becomes mud; and then the process of generation
will begin again' (ibid. A 33.3). Cf. 21.A 40, where gathering of little fires
is derived from the moist exhalation (anathy miasis).
443 See Anaximander, pp. 140ff.
444 It is gratifying to find that West (pp. 187ff.) has arrived at a similar con-
clusion by travelling along a very different road. My interpretation of the
dual exhalation in terms of two psychic destinies was reached independently.
There is a more than accidental parallel in the Stoic doctrine of two
forms of pneuma: one of the psyche, which is hotter and drier, and one
of vital ‘nature’ (physis), the nutritive or vegetative soul, which is damper
and cooler (von Arnim II, 787). In a connected context, Galen naturally
cites Heraclitus on the dry soul (CIX, D. 118; see 68a8 in Marcovich, p.
373 =von Arnim II, 788).
445 See Zeller-Nestle, pp. 860f. The meteorological report is given in a note
(861 n. 1) without comment.
446 See above all Kirk, p. 341; Kirk and Raven, pp. 208f. Other references in
Marcovich, p. 583, who describes the passage as a ‘sheer forgery’. I suspect
it was typical of many ancient books that cited and expounded the text of
Heraclitus.
447 At this point, Sextus (or perhaps his source) shows some awareness of the
discrepancy between the literal sense of logos as ‘discourse’ in the text he
cites and the cosmic sense of Divine Reason in the circumambient atmos-
phere imposed upon the text by his interpretation. So also in the phrase
tropon tina (‘he refers in a way to the surrounding medium’) with which
fragment I is introduced.
448 In the phrase ‘therefore one should follow what is common’, and in the
substitution of koinos for xynos.
449 It should be noted that there is also such a thing as a strong case for his-
torical borrowing. Herodotus tells us that the Greeks got astronomical
equipment and knowledge from the Babylonians (II.109.3), and we
believe him; not because he is reliable on matters of cultural origins (he is
generally unreliable), but because in this instance there is the modern his-
tory of Babylonian astronomy to back him up, with a much earlier and
more systematic tradition, and detailed resemblances (e.g. in the zodiac),
which make it extremely implausible to posit an independent discovery by
the Greeks. In science and technology, unlike mythic and philosophic
speculation, the hypothesis of historical diffusion is probably a good one
whenever it is chronologically possible at all. For this is the kind of thing
societies do borrow from one another very often, as we can see from the
diffusion of modern technology around the world.
Concordances
Diels-Kranz
© бсо зз су С + WON н
This edition
I
III
XLVII
Appendix I
CXVII
XLVIIIA
CXII
LXXV
LXXI
CXXIV
LXXVI
L, CXIIIB
LXXIIA
CXV
CXVI
CXXII
IV
VII
XVII
XCVIII
LXXXIX
VIII
LXIX
C
XCVI
XC
LXXXIV
LXXXV
LXXXVII
XCVII
XXXVII
342 Concordances
Diels-Kranz This edition
31A—B XXXVIII-XXXIX
32 CXVIII
33 LXVI
34 II
35 IX
36 СП
37 LXXIIB
38 XXIV
39 LXII
40 XVIII
41 LIV
42 XXI
43 CIV
44 LXV
45 XXXV
46 Appendix I
47 XI
48 LXXIX
49 LXIII
49a Appendix I
50 XXXVI
51 LXXVIII
52 XCIV
53 LXXXIII
54 LXXX
55 XIV
56 XXII
57 ХІХ
58 LXXIII
59 LXXIV
60 CHI
61 LXX
62 XCII
63 CX
64 CXIX
65 CXX
66 CXXI
67 CXXIII
67a Appendix I
68 Appendix I
Concordances 343
Diels-Kranz This edition
69 Appendix I
70 LVIII
71 V
72 V
78 V
74 XIII
75 XCI
76 XLI
71 CVIII
78 LV
79 LVII
80 LXXXII
81 XXVI
82 LVI
83 LVI
84A LII
84B LIII
85 CV
86 LXXXVI
87 LX
88 XCIII
89 VI
90 XL
91 LI
92 XXXIV
93 XXXIII
94 XLIV
95 CVII
96 LXXXVIII
97 LXI
98 CXI
99 XLVI
100 XLIIA
101 XXVIII
101a XV
102 LXVIII
103 XCIX
104 LIX
105 XXIII
106 XX
344 Concordances
Diels-Kranz This edition
107 XVI
108 XXVII
109 CVII
110 LXVII
111 LXVII
112 XXXII
113 XXXI
114 XXX
115 CI
116 XXIX
117 CVI
118 CIX
119 CXIV
120 XLV
121 LXIV
122 Appendix I
123 X
124 CXXV
125 LXXVII
125a Appendix I
126 XLIX
129 XXV
АБ XLIII
А13 XLIII
A15 CXIIIA
A19 XCV
A22 LXXXI
A23 XII
Concordances
This edition
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
345
Marcovich
1
2
23b
3
69b!, 4, Зс, 1h!
24
11
10
63b
15f = 23e
23a
23d
23f
53A
53B
346
Concordances
This edition
XLI
XLII (A)
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIIIA—B
XLIX
LXVI
LXVII
LXVIII
LXIX
LXX
LXXI
LXXIIA—B
LXXIII
LXXIV
LXXV
LXXVI
LXXVII
LXXVIII
LXXIX
LXXX
49
121
44
33
110—111
102
23
61
Marcovich
66e!
64
65
52
62
60
57
58a, c
42
40a
40c?
56A
56B
85
90
92b
92a
92d
101
109
22
100
98
105
103
104
71, 44
91
45
35
37
Зба!, cl
46
32
27d! (= 28c!)
80
31
27
39
9
Concordances
This edition
LXXXIA—B
LXXXII
LXXXIII
LXXXIV
LXXXV
LXXXVI
LXXXVII
LXXXVIII
LXXXIX
XC
XCI
XCII
XCIII
XCIV
XCVA-—B
XCVI
XCVII
XCVIII
XCIX
C
CI
CII
CIII
CIV
CV
CVI
CVII
CVIII
CIX
CX
CXI
CXII
CXIIIA
CXIIIB
CXIV
CXV
CXVI
CXVII
CXVIII
CXIX
Diels
A 22
28A
28B
A 19
103
115
847
Marcovich
28c?, c5
28
29
74
20
12
19
76
49
48
]h?
47
41
93
108b!, b?
97
95
99
34
96
112
66
33
102
70
69
110a3
66d!
68
73
72
78
40
94
87
50
86
84
79
348 Concordances
This edition Diels Marcovich
CXX 65 79,55
CXXI 66 82
CXXII 16 81
CXXIII 67 77
CXXIV 10 25
CXXV 124 107
Indexes
1. General Index
I have listed the first occurrences and principal discussions of each name and topic, but there
is no attempt at a complete listing for items mentioned frequently throughout the whole
book (such as fire and logos) or for authors very frequently cited in the notes (such as Diels,
Marcovich, Reinhardt).
Adkins, A.W.H., 13; nn. 30, 34
aér, 141, 154f., 239
Aeschylus, 7, 90ff., 201, 270; nn. 51, 241,
261, 268
afterlife, see death
aión, 71n, 227f., 231
aithér, 162, 250, 293
aithrios, 162, 250; n. 413
ambiguity, deliberate, 91—5, 97f., 115f.,
123ff., 167, 176, 181, 268—71; see also
hyponoia
anathy miasis (exhalation), 147, 240, 243,
250, 256-60
Anaxagoras, 10, 139, 163, 165, 239, 275
Anaximander, 9, 16—19, 96, 108, 138, 144,
147, 161, 163, 166, 206f., 222, 226,
272
Anaximenes, 19f, 22f, 108, 136ff., 145,
239f., 248
antamoibé (or antameibetai), 20, 46—7nn.,
146
Apollo: and Delphic oracle, 43n, 116, 122—
6; bow and lyre as attributes of, 198,
200f.
Archilochus, 37n, 111
Arcturus, 160, 162—4; n. 191
areté, 12ff., 43n, 120ff.
Aristotle, as interpreter of H., 93, 131, 199
(with n. 263), 259f.
arrangement of fragments, 6—9, 89—91,
132, 170, 218, 233, 281; nn. 24, 208,
422
Artemesium of Ephesus, 2; nn. 4—5, 81
auge, 76n, 77n, 245ff., 256f.
Babylonian influence on Greek astronomy,
16f., 109, 158; n. 449
battle, death in, 232, 236, 248ff.; see also
war
Bear (Ursa Major), 51, 161f.; n. 189
Bernays, J., n. 243
Bias of Priene, 9, 57n, 175—8;n. 8
Bollack, (J.)-Wismann, (H.), 26, 28n, 46n,
56n, 111, 170, 178, 207, 234; nn. 18,
56, 60,73
bow: as image of unity, 192f., 198—202,
210; n. 262; name of, 201
bowls, celestial, 165, 291f.; п. 440
Bronowski, J., 137f. (with n. 128)
Burkert, W., nn. 202, 312
Burnet, J., 87, 135, 148—51, 170; nn. 24,
55, 112f.
Bywater, I., 6, 26, 28n, 44n, 46n, 183,
193; nn. 18, 60, 200
Calogero, G., 240
Campbell, J.K., 230, n. 307
Campbell, Lewis, 198
carding wool, 190—2
Carratelli, G.P., nn. 296, 299, 381
Censorinus, 156—8
Cherniss, H., 155, 258; nn. 123, 146, 364
childhood as a theme, 111 (with n. 77),
173f., 178f., 227-31, 235, 244
Chrysippus, nn. 135, 137, 253, 433
Clay, Diskin, n. 278
Cleanthes, 4f., 79n, 166, 259f., 296; nn. 14,
135, 251, 366—7, 375
Clement of Alexandria, as source, 5, 44n.,
46n., 139ff., 148, 151, 246; n. 121, 283,
312
cognition, see wisdom
common, what is shared, 3, 14f., 101f.,
117—19, 130, 180, 236, 252—4; see also
xynos
communication, difficulty of, 99, 101, 124,
130, 270f.
comprehending, see wisdom
350 Indexes
conflict, see war
conflagration, cosmic, 134ff., 144ff., 155,
226, 257, 273, 276, 286
contradiction, principle of, 192 with nn.
249—50; 267ff. with n. 394
corpses, 212—14, 254ff., 297; n. 286
cosmic god, 11, 162f., 171—3, 208, 228,
268ff., 275, 277ff.; n. 407
cosmogony, 18ff., 134ff., 139, 141—53;
nn. 137, 147
cosmology, 16ff., 132ff., 141—5, 170, 200
Cratylus, 3, 168 with n. 198
cult, critique of, 212, 262—7, 298
cyclical change and cyclical structure,
144ff., 150ff., 165f., 215, 226f., 233—6,
240; see conflagration; cosmogony;
great year; periodicity
daimon, 252, 260f.; n. 414
date of H.'s book, 1;n. 2
day and night, unity of, 108—10, 276, 278,
284
death and afterlife, 201f., 210—28, 231ff.,
236, 238, 243, 248—59
Deichgraber, K., nn. 14, 16—17, 24
deity, H.'s conception of, 134, 173f., 217ff.,
261, 276—80; n. 230; see also cosmic
god; mortality
Delian inscription, 182
Delphi, oracle of, see Apollo; oracular style
Demetrius of Phaleron, nn. 217, 227
diapheromenon, 85n, 197, 284; cf.
diapheron, 193
Diels, H., ix, 3, 6, 21, 25f., 56n, 87, 95; nn.
9, 37, 47
diké, 49n, 61n, 185, 192, 207; etymology
of, n. 232; see also justice
Diller, H., n. 120
Diodotus as interpreter of H., 21
Diogenes of Apollonia, 19f., 131, 240, 247
Dionysus, 219, 263—6; as king of the dead
in Egypt, n. 386
Dodds, E.R., nn. 34, 241
dokein, 29n, 67n, 69n, 102, 210f.
dreamers, see sleep
drink, effect upon the soul, 244, 248
dryness of the soul, 245ff.
Dumézil, G., 299
ecpyrosis, see conflagration
elements and elemental change, 141ff., 148,
153f., 165, 215f., 221, 225f., 237—40;
n. 173
Empedocles, 145, 219f.
enlightenment, fifth-century, 4, 10, 15; n.
377
éthos (character), 173, 260Е.; n. 376
etymology, 111—12, 201, 257, 274; as ‘true
statement’, 270; of Zeus’ name, n. 398
exhalation, 259f.; dual exhalations, 292f.;
nn. 441, 444; see anathymiasis
experience, 99f., 106f.; see also mathésis
Farnell, L.R., nn. 310, 388—9, 392
fate and necessity, 157; nn. 180f.
Ficino, M., 246
finding and seeking as a theme, 105, 129,
210, 244; see also hidden structure
fire, doctrine of, 128, 132—583, 250ff.,
272ff., 279f., 285f.; п. 147; as symbol
for unity in opposition, 209, 273; and
lamplighting, 214f.; fire and the soul,
128, 238-43, 248ff.; see also anathy-
miasis ; conflagration
flux, 147f., 168, 223f.; see also elements;
river image
Frankel, H., 87, 174, 229; nn. 56, 65, 212
Furies, as servants of Justice, 159, 161, 163
generation: replacement of father by son,
159, 225, 228ff., 233—5; number of
years in a, 157 —9, 229-31; see also
childhood
geometric model for heavens, 16f., 219f.
gignósko, 29n, 69n, 103f., 107, 109, 115,
171, 211, 266; n. 281; gnóme, 55n,
171—3, 181, 200; gnothi sauton, 116
Gigon, O., 170, 193, 195, 208; nn. 163, 204,
324
gold tablets in burials, 220, 225, 262f.; nn.
286, 296, 299, 316, 385
Gomperz, H., n. 22
graspings, see syllapsies
great year (magnus annus), 145, 155—9; nn.
122, 184—5
guards and watchers, 49f., 79n, 161—3,
254—6, 258; nn. 405—6; see also justice
Guthrie, W.K.C., nn. 56, 84, 163
Hades, 81n.; etymology of, 257, 266;as a
region, 258; identified with Dionysus,
81, 264ff.
Halbfass, W., n. 202
Hall, J.J., n. 141
harmonie, 65n, 148, 150, 152, 160, 193,
195—205, 221, 284f.; literal meaning,
196; nn. 257—8, 260—1; central role
of, 197, 200
Hecataeus, 1, 37n, 96f., 107Е., 113
Hegel, 188f.
Heracliteans, nn. 10, 372, 398
hermeneutical assumptions, see interpret-
ation
Hermodorus, 59n, 178f.; nn. 8, 219, 222
Herodotus, usage of, 92, 102, 242; nn. 69,
84, 116, 133, 309, 334
Indexes
Hesiod, 37n, 107—11; n. 26
hidden structure, 202—4; see also harmonie
Hippocratic treatises, echoes of H. in, 4
with n. 12, 186 with n. 235
Hippolytus as a source, 5, 64n, 191, 195f.,
271f., 281
historie, histores, 33n, 96, 99f., 105f., 110,
113
hodos (way), 129, 191f., 240
Holscher, U., nn. 101, 103
Homer, 10ff., 37, 39n, 111-13
homologein, 15, 45n, 65n, 101, 130f.,
197f., 268; misguided emendation of in
LXXVIII (D. 51), 195 with n. 255
Hussey, E., nn. 55, 79, 198, 269
hybris, 179f., 241, 243
hyponoia, 94f., 123£., 129, 133, 140, 194,
201
identity over time, of persons and things,
222—6, 251, 253
ignorance, see under wisdom
interpretation: principles of, 87ff.; density,
87ff., 196f., 202; resonance, 89ff., 244;
alternative readings, 92—5, 162, 172,
174, 194, 217—19; see also ambiguity;
hyponoia; prolepsis
Jacoby, F., n. 58
Joly, R., n. 12
judgment by fire, 271—5; see also justice
justice: cosmic, 15, 144, 159—63, 184, 193,
206f., 272ff., 282; and punishment, 185,
192, 212, 255, 263, 272; guardians of,
159—63, 254—6, 258, 274; relativity of,
183—5; identified with Conflict, 205ff.,
273; see also dikë
Kerschensteiner, J., nn. 120f., 131
Kirk, G.S., 26, 62n, 143, 190, 193, 216,
229, 240, 248f., 292; nn. 56, 63, 76
koros (satiety), 73n, 83n, 180—2, 233,
235, 271, 276; nn. 7, 223
kosmos, 16, 22, 45n, 85n, 99, 104, 132—8,
145, 151, 156, 159, 200, 287; nn. 120f.
Kranz, W., n. 345
kykeon drink, 65n, 194f., 200
law, see nomos; political theory
Lebeck, Anne, 90; nn. 49, 51
Lénai, Lenaia, 81, 262, 264
life and death, unity of, 202, 216ff., 220ff.,
264, 271
light, as image for the soul, 214f., 239,
245—58, 256, 298f.
Lloyd-Jones, H., n. 27
logos, 20, 29n, 45nn, 57n, 75n, 90, 93—5,
97—102, 114f., 122ff., 126, 129—31,
351
144, 171, 175—7; as speech, 15; as
measure, 47n, 129, 149; as ratio, 159,
285; as reputation, 57n; of soul, 126—
30, 237; several senses at once, 22, 176;
in Stoic interpretation, 102 with n. 64,
104, 293ff.
Long, A.A., n. 375
Lucian as reader of H., 5 with n. 16
lyre, image of, 198—200, 284f.
madness, 126, 264—7
Mansfeld, J., nn. 210, 280
Marcovich, M., ix, 25, 190f., 193, 216, 227;
nn. 2, 18, 24
Marcus Aurelius as source, 6, 104, 153, 216
mathésis, mathein, mathos, 35n, 103, 106;
n. 66; cf. polymathié; see also experience
measures: of fire, 134f., 138, 140; of sea,
143; of sun, 109, 159ff.; of cosmic order,
144, 149—52, 156f., 159—61, 204; see
also proportions
Milesian natural philosophy, 2, 9—12, 16ff.,
99; see also Anaximander; Anaximenes
moisture weakening the soul, 244—50
Monism, 131f. (with n. 118), 136, 206, 221,
269; see also unity
moroi, 73nn, 231—5
mortality, as distinctively human, 1 Off.,
219f.; of the gods (immortals), 216—19
musical harmony, 196—9, 203, 284f.; see
also harmonié
music of the spheres, 196, 203f.; n. 270
mysteries, 81, 262f.
mystic doctrine of the soul, 220, 222, 225,
232 (with n. 310), 236, 238, 263
names and naming, 185, 201f., 269f., 280;
nn. 266—7
negativity, positive value of, 182f., 188f.,
192f., 202, 210
Nilsson, M.P., n. 380
nomos, 3, 15, 117f., 179; nomizomena, 263
noos, 37n, 43n, 57n, 101—3, 107f., 117f.,
175
North, Helen, nn. 31, 85, 95
nychthemeron, 109
obscurity, of H., 95, 124, 202, 213—15; see
also ambiguity; hyponoia; interpretation;
oracular style
one-many (one-all) as a theme, 177—81,
234, 271f., 282—6; n. 428
opposites, unity of, 21, 23, 109f., 124, 131,
148—50, 184, 188f., 192ff., 199ff.;
relativity of in human experience, 181—
90, 280; change between, 165f., 279;
cosmic and anthropocentric, 209f.; see
also harmonie; negativity; syllapsies
Indexes
352
oracular style, 7, 91, 97, 123ff.
Oriental parallels and influence, 297ff.
Orphic doctrine and tablets, see gold tab-
lets; mystic doctrine of soul;
Pythagorean view of soul
Owen, G.E.L., x; n. 129
palintonos, corruption in LXXVIII (D. 51),
195f., 199; n. 264
palintropos, 65n, 198—200; correct reading
in LXXVIII (D. 51), 195f.; n. 256
panpsychism, 119, 128, 221f., 238
Parmenides, 136, 154, 192, 211; n. 160; on
names, 201 with n. 267
Pascal, B., 254
peirata, 128, 236; see also termata
periodicity, 150, 155—9, 166; see cyclical
change
Persians and Persian influence, 262, 297ff.
pessoi (game), 71n, 227; n. 302
Pherecydes of Syros, 113; nn. 80, 397
Philolaus, 196, 204, 285
philosophos, 31n, 105
phrén, 57n, 175
phronein, phronesis, 29n, 41n, 43n, 101f.,
107, 119
physis, 33n, 99, 105
Plass, P., n. 141
Plato, as interpreter of H., 4, 148, 222f.;
nn. 177—8, 228
Plotinus, as a source, 5, 169; n. 202
Plutarch, as source, 5, 104, 110, 124—6,
153—6, 195, 246, 258f.; nn. 121,
166—9, 256
political theory, 2f., 15, 178—81, 184f.
polymathié, 3 7n, 108, 110, 113, 171
Powell, J.E., 92; n. 61
préstér, 47n, 138—43, 239, 256, 272; nn.
138—42
priamel, 181f.
prolepsis, 90f., 112, 129
proportions and ratios, 155, 159, 174f.,
179, 203f., 285; see also measures
prose, early use in Greek, 96f., 113f. with
n. 81
Proust, M., n. 287
psyché, 35n, 45n, 75n, 107, 126ff., 165,
237—43, 251, 259ff.; nn. 112—193; see
also soul
punishment, see Justice
Pythagoras, 1, 10, 27, 37n, 39—41, 107£.,
113f., 172, 196 (with nn. 259, 270),
203f., 211f.
Pythagorean view of the soul, 220ff., 238;
notion of harmony, 158, 196, 203f., 285
readings of a text, see interpretation
Reinhardt, K., 8, 87, 126f., 135, 139, 146,
151f., 155f., 158£., 172; nn. 23, 72, 79
relativity, see justice; negativity ; opposites
rest and weariness, 169f., 181f.
Richardson, N.J., n. 384
ring composition, 215, 235, 238, 285; cf.
cyclical change and structure
river image, 166—9, 223, 260; see also flux
Rohde, E., nn. 104, 106f., 290
rotation, cosmic, 194f.; n. 253
Roussos, E.N., x; nn. 75, 202
Sages (seven), wisdom of, 9, 13, 22, 116,
172,177
Sarakatsani, marriage among, 230
satiety and excess, 180—2, 271; need and
satiety, 276; see also koros
Saunders, T.J., n. 302
Schleiermacher, F., 297; nn. 90, 104
Schottlaender, R., nn. 219, 221
seasons, 140, 145, 155—61; see also great
year
self-knowledge, 41, 116—18, 121f., 251f.
semen, as liquefied psyche, 248, 260
Seneca, 110 with n. 74
sexuality and phallic cult, 233f., 264f.
Sibyl, 45n, 124—6
Simonides, 234f.; n. 314
sleep as a theme, 99, 213—16, 255; in Stoic
doxography, 294f.
smell and the soul, 256—9
Snell, B., 87, 127, 282; nn. 102, 111, 134
Socrates, 4, 95, 127 (with nn. 112—13),
130, 172
Solon, 3, 9, 180; nn. 7—8
solstice, 109f., 159—62; see also tropat
sophie, 120ff., 172; n. 94
sophos, 31n, 41n, 45n, 51n, 83n, 105, 115,
131, 171f., 268f.
sophronein, 14, 41n, 43n, 116—23, 251—3
sophrosyné, 13 with nn. 32f., 120
soul, H.'s view of, 126—30, 213ff., 243—63;
takes the place of air, not fire, 238—40,
248ff., 259; see also psyché
Spinoza, 119, 252, 254, 267, 299,301.
spurious and dubious fragments, 288f.; cf.
158—5, 237
steering as a theme, 170f., 271f.; n. 400
Stephanus (Henri Estienne), 246; n. 344
Stobaeus as a source, 5, 120
Stoic interpretation of H., 4f., 102, 104,
134ff., 145ff., 154—7, 260, 276, 294ff.;
nn. 115, 131, 135, 137, 147; cf. nn. 372,
408, 444; see also Cleanthes, Chrysippus
Stokes, M.C., nn. 118, 248, 250
style, see ambiguity ; arrangement of frag-
ments; interpretation; oracular style
sun, as principle of cosmic order, 155f.,
159—683, 250, 274; п. 177; size and
rekindling of, 163—5
Indexes
syllapsies (graspings), 85n, 281—6
sympheromenon, 85n, 197, 284; cf.
sympheron, 193
syrmata, 186, 188; n. 237
Teichmüller, G., n. 190
termata, 51n, 161f., 199; see also peirata
Thales, 9, 17, 39, 112f.; n. 189
Theophrastus’ account of H., 4, 7, 20f.,
134f., 140, 154, 156f., 165, 290—3; nn.
137, 143, 253, 373
thinking, see phronein; sóphronein; wisdom
thunderbolt, 83, 142, 256, 271f., 277; nn.
142, 251
thymos, 7 7n, 241ff.
torture, 189—93
totality, see one-many; wholes
tropai (turnings, solstice), 47n, 109f., 138ff.,
148, 152, 158, 160
Tyranny, H.'s disapproval of, nn. 8, 224
Tyrtaeus, 232, 235
unity of all things, 131f., 146, 226, 252f.,
278, 283ff.; see also harmonié; monism;
opposites; syllapsies
Upanishads, 298f., 301
Verdenius, W.J., nn. 334—5, 378, 389f.
Vlastos, G., 206f.; nn. 125, 144, 162
von Arnim, H., nn. 135, 137, 253
353
Walzer, R., 195; nn. 21, 204, 321
war as a cosmic theme, 67, 166, 204—9,
237, 250, 284
West, M.L., 292, 297 —302; nn. 21, 55, 60
wholes and not wholes, 282f.
Wiese, H., nn. 69, 146, 159, 167, 282
Wilamowitz, U. von, 126, 183, 195, 219;
nn. 139, 191, 242
wisdom and understanding, 21f., 55, 57, 77,
83, 90f., 98—112, 114—22, 130f., 170ff.;
see also gignóskó ; noos; phronein; sophie;
sophos
Wismann, H., see Bollack-Wismann
word play, 15, 201, 213f., 270, 287; nn. 36,
88; see also ambiguity
Xenocrates, possible source for CI (D. 115),
n. 320
Xenophanes, 1, 10, 23, 37n, 107f., 172,
211, 266f.; nn. 293, 393
xynos, 29n, 43nn, 67n, 75n, 90, 97, 104,
117—19, 197, 200, 236; n. 62; as
attribute of logos, 101f.
Zeller, E., 147—9, 239; nn. 151—2, 234,
239
Zeno of Citium, nn. 135, 137, 147
Zeus, 51, 83nn, 118, 161—3, 171f., 194,
208, 267ff., 274f.; the name of,
267—70
Zuntz, G., nn. 295—6, 299, 385
2. Index of Passages discussed
Aeschylus
Suppliants (407), n. 117; (584f.), 270
Alcmaeon
fr. (1), n. 59
Anaxagoras
fr. (12), n. 400; (15—16), 139; (16), n.
136
Archilochus
fr. (1 Diehl), n. 206; (38), 205; (66),
n. 67; (68), 103
Aristophanes
Acharnians (237ff.), n. 388
Clouds (233), n. 350
Aristotle
De Caelo (П.9), 196
Meteor. (346 b 35ff.), 166; (352 a 31),
n. 184; (363 a 31—b 6), n. 186;
(371 a 15—17, 31ff.), 142
De Anima (405 a 25ff.), n. 367 (cf. pp.
259ff.)
De Part. Anim. (645 а 17), 287
Met. (1005 b 25, 1012 a 24ff.), n. 249
Rhet. (1399 b 5), n. 392; (1407 b 11ff.),
93
Democritus
fr. (64), n. 11; (117), 130; (158), n. 11;
(236), 243
Diogenes Laertius
II (22), 95
IX (1), n. 1; (1—2), 6; (5), 9 (n. 24); (15),
5; (16), 95 (n. 57)
Diogenes of Apollonia
fr. (2), 166; (3), n. 208; (5), 247, n. 400
Empedocles
fr. (17. 1—20), 286; (27), n. 257; (35.14),
219; (96), n. 257; (110.10), 119;
(112.4), 219 with n. 295; (118), 220;
(126), 220
Euripides
fr. (638 Nauck), 112, 220; (910), 134
Gold burial tablets
A1 (5 Zuntz), 236 (n. 316)
A1 (8), 220 (n. 296)
A4 (4), 220 (n. 296)
354 Indexes
B1, 225 (n. 299)
B2, 225 (n. 299)
Carratelli (1974), 225 (n. 299), 262 (n.
381)
Hecataeus
fr. (1), 97 with n. 58
Herodotus
1 (92.4), 190 (n. 244); (131.1), 298;
(132.3), 300
II (61), 219 (n. 294); (86), 219 (n.
294)
Hesiod
Theogony (24ff.), n. 58; (748—57), 37n
Works and Days (11—26), 206 with n.
274; (121—3), 254; (252—5), 254;
(256—64), 185, 255, (275t£.), 15;
(765ff.), 37n
[Hippocrates] De Victu
I (5—24), 4 (n. 12); (5), 157 (n. 181)
Homer
Iliad (6.208), 12; (9.410—16), n. 313;
(9.443), 12; (11.784), 12; (18.95—
120), n. 313; (18.107), 204; (18.309),
205
Odyssey (18.136), 103
Ion of Chios
fr. (1), 97
Lucretius
VI (423ff.), n. 141
Melissus
fr. (8.3), 166
Philolaus
fr. (6), 196, 204, n. 427
Pindar
fr. (116 Bowra), 127, 215 (n. 290),
228; (121), 263 (n. 384); (125), n.
258; (153), n. 276
Plato
Cratylus (396A£f.), 270; (402A), 166,
168; (408C), п. 253; (412D—413C),
274f.; (413B—C), 156; (439C—D),
168 (n. 199)
Gorgias (492E), 220
Laws (IV.714A), 15 (n. 36); (X.908—
4), n. 302; (XII.957C), 15 (n. 36)
Meno (81C), 222
Phaedo (70A), 240; (70D—E), 222
Protagoras (334A—C), 186
Sophist (242D—E), 169, nn. 152, 156
Symposium (187A), 193, 195; (207Dff.),
167, 223
Timaeus (22C—23A), n. 184; (39D), 158;
(48Bff.), 148, n. 136
Theaetetus (152E), 166; (153A), n. 177;
(176A), n. 228; (182C), 168 (n. 199)
Sappho
fr. (16) (Lobel—Page), 181
Semonides of Amorgus
fr. (1.1—2 Diehl), n. 89; (1.3), n. 210;
(29.13), 127
Sextus Empiricus
Outlines of Pyrrhonism (1.40), 187 (n.
236); (1.59), 187
Against the Mathematicians (VII.126—
34), 293—6
Simonides
fr. (4 Bergk), 234 (n. 314)
Solon
fr. (3), 180, n. 223; (5.9), nn. 7, 228
Sophocles
fr. (753 Nauck), 263 (n. 384)
Tyrtaeus
9.23—34 Diehl, 232
Xenophanes
fr. (2.12, 14), 172; (11—12), 11, 266;
(14—15), 11, 266; (23), 11; (25—26),
11; (34—35), 211; (38), n. 421
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