The Companions of Gods

CHAPTER 10 The Companions of Gods

‘I sought for myself’ (B 101), Heraclitus says,1 and our authorities tell us that he did so in compliance with the Delphic precept ‘Know thyself’:2

Julian, Or. vi 5.30–32: Therefore the god in Delphi announces: ‘Know thyself’, and Heraclitus (responds): ‘I sought for myself’. Plutarch, Adv. Col. 1118C6–9: But Heraclitus, as having accomplished something great and holy, said ‘I sought for myself’, and of the Delphic inscriptions he thought ‘Know thyself’ to be the most divine.3

Heraclitus’ response to the injunction was not ‘I did know myself’,4 but ‘I searched for myself’, which indicates that he understood the precept as urg- ing one to look for one’s true nature. This search led Heraclitus to the recogni- tion that his nature was an immortal being entombed in the mortal body;5 he generalized this discovery in B 119: ‘The nature of man is a δαίμων’ (above, pp. 87–88). In B 116 self-knowledge is coupled with self-restraint: ‘All men have a share in self-knowing and self-restraining (γινώσκειν ἑωυτοὺς καὶ σωφρονεῖν)’. Since Heraclitus considered self-restraint, that is, mastering desire, the means of purifying the soul from the body’s pollution, hence the agent of salvation,

1 ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν. δίζημαι means ‘seek out’, ‘look for’, ‘try to find out’, ‘enquire whether’ (LSJ, s.v.; Lex. Hdt., s.v.; Solmsen, ‘Δίζημαι δίζομαι und δίζω’, 427 and n. 1; cf. B 22: χρυσὸν γὰρ οἱ διζήμενοι, ‘those who seek for gold’) and not ‘look, enquire into’. 2 The earliest extant mention of the Delphic maxims is Eur. fr. 923, but at least some of the maxims (the oldest apparently ‘Know thyself’) were probably already engraved at the entrance of the Alcmaeonid temple (erected after the fire of 548 BCE): Parke and Wormell, The Delphic Oracle i, 386–87 and n. 24; Burkert, Greek Religion, 148. 3 ὁ δ’ Ἡράκλειτος, ὡς μέγα τι καὶ σεμνὸν διαπεπραγμένος, ἐδιζησάμην φησίν ἐμεωυτόν, καὶ τῶν ἐν Δελφοῖς γραμμάτων θειότατον ἐδόκει τό γνῶθι σαυτόν. The subject of φησίν and ἐδόκει is Ἡράκλειτος. B. Einarson’s and P.H. De Lacy’s Loeb translation reads ‘ “Know Thyself” was held to be the most godlike . . .’; this shift of the grammatical subject, from ‘Heraclitus’ to ‘Know Thyself’, is unnecessary and awkward (for δοκέω ‘think’ with direct object in Plutarch see Pomp. 49.6.4, De Is. et Os. 383C7, Quaest. conv. 730E2, etc.) and the meaning thus obtained is incongruous: who in the past did hold the maxim to be the most godlike? Had it subsequently fallen into obscurity? 4 Xen. Mem. iv 2.25.1: ἐμαυτὸν ἐγίγνωσκον; Arist. Rh. 1395a25: ἐγίγνωσκεν ἑαυτόν. 5 As confirmed by Plotinus: asking how his soul descended into the body, he proceeds (Enn. iv.8.1.11–17): ‘Heraclitus . . . advises us to seek for the answer (ζητεῖν τοῦτο) . . . as he himself, having sought, found (αὐτὸς ζητήσας εὕρεν)’; Plotinus’ last clause alludes to B 101, which he quotes verbatim at Enn. v 9.5.31.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/9789004338210_013 The Companions of Gods 217 he regarded it as the greatest goodness (σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη) (B 112).6 And since, as B 116 implies, self-restraint follows upon self-knowledge, Heraclitus, as Plutarch tells us, deemed ‘Know thyself’ the most divine of the Delphic precepts.

The interpretation of B 101, popular since Schleiermacher (Herakleitos der dunkle, 241), is that, looking into himself, Heraclitus discovered the logos, the true nature of things, and the like, therefore the fragment endorses introspec- tion as the way of enquiry. This interpretation is hardly consistent with the meaning of δίζημαι (above, p. 216 n. 1) and is at odds with the context in which the fragment is quoted by Plutarch and Julian. B 112 and B 116 are quoted in Stobaeus along with other Heraclitean fragments none of which is unauthentic or a weak paraphrase;7 for that reason the two fragments must be accepted as genuine unless the contrary is con- clusively demonstrated. Yet although no such demonstration has ever been produced, the fragments are rejected by numerous scholars, following in that Schleiermacher.8 Bernays asserted that B 112 is inconsistent with Heraclitus’ language and thought.9 As regards language, the contention is scarcely defensible.10 As regards thought, nothing can be more consistent with

6 ‘In the Apolline religion sophrosyne results in moderation and self-knowledge, in the mystery cults, etc., in katharsis’; ‘[W]hen the concept of purification was extended . . . to include the katharsis of the soul through some form of abstinence, usually the restraint of passion, . . . the notions of purification and sophrosyne coincide[d]’ (North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature, 4 n. 12, 30). 7 B 112 is quoted along with B 95, B 108, B 110, B 111, B 113, and B 114 in the chapter Περὶ Ἀρετῆς (iii 1.174–179); B 116 is quoted along with B 117 and B 118 in the chapter Περὶ Σωφροσύνης (iii 5.6–8). 8 Herakleitos der dunkle, 207, 240. 9 ‘Heraklitische Studien’, 69; similarly Bywater ad fr. cvii. 10 B 112: σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαΐοντας. For λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν cf. ποιεῖν καὶ λέγειν in B 73 and ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων in B 1; for ἐπαΐοντας cf. οὐκ ἐπαΐων in B 117; ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν is almost the exact reverse of ψευδῶν τέκτονας καὶ μάρτυρας in B 28. Having made these observations, Kirk declared the fragment ‘a clever fusion of Heraclitean phrases’ (Heraclitus, 390–91), a logic which made Gladigow wonder how one could prove the inauthenticity of a fragment by pinpoint- ing its similarity to the authentic ones (Sophia und Kosmos, 111 n. 3). On Heidel’s objec- tions to the allegedly anachronistic meaning of σοφίη and φύσις in B 112 (‘On Certain Fragments of the Presocratics’, 713–14) see Kirk, l.c., and Gladigow, l.c.; see also Kerferd, ‘The Image of the Wise Man in Greece in the Period before Plato’. As regards Barnes’ assertion that B 112 is a paraphrase (The Presocratic Philosophers, 133), quod gratis asseri- tur, gratis negatur. On attaching to ἀληθέα, ‘what is true’, the ‘etymological value’ of ‘not