UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES N. LLEGE LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/anaximanderorigiOOkahn ANAXIMANDER AND THE ORIGINS OF GREEK COSMOLOGY AXAXIMANDKR Small portrait relief, probably early Roman Empire after Hellenistic original (Museo Nazionale Romano) ANAXIMANDER AND THE ORIGINS OF GREEK COSMOLOGY By CHARLES H. KAHN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK 1960 THE STANWOOD COCKEY LODGE FOUNDATION HAS GENEROUSLY PROVIDED FUNDS TO ASSIST IN THE PUBLICATION OF THIS VOLUME Published igSo, Columbia University Press, New Tork Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-116'jy Published in Great Britain, India, and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi Printed in Great Britain To Kurt von Fritz 19 CONTENTS PREFACE Xi ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT TITLES USED IN CITATION XV BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Xvii INTRODUCTION 3 The Documentary Evidence for Anaximandefs Views INTRODUCTION TO THE DOXOGRAPHY 1 Theophrastus and His Excerptors, 12. Theophrastus as an Historian of Early Greek Philosophy, 17. Supplementary Note: On the Relative Accuracy of Aristotle and Theophrastus in the Use of Documentary Material, 22. ARRANGEMENT OF THE DOXOGRAPHY 25 Topics of the Doxography for Anaximander, 26. Abbreviations of Authors in the Doxography, 27. Correspondence with the Arrangement in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 27. THE doxography: TEXTS AND COMMENTARY 28 The Cosmology of Anaximander I. THE MILESIAN THEORY OF THE NATURAL WORLD 75 Position of the Earth, 76. Form of the Earth, 81. Antipodes, 84. Formation of the Heavens; Stars and Sun; The Moon; Size, Position, and Distance of the Rings, 85. Meteorology, 98. Wind; Rain; Lightning and Thunder, 100. Origin of the Sea, Origin of Life; Descent of 102. Animal Man, 109. The 'p''-'XV' 114. Supplementary Note: The Earliest Doctrine of a Spherical Earth, 1 15. II. ELEMENTS AND OPPOSITES : THE MEMBERS OF THE WORLD II The Classic Doctrine, 121. The Origins, 133. Supplementary Note: On the Chronological Relationship Between Anaxagoras and Empedocles, 163. 1 vm CONTENTS III. anaximander's fragment: the universe governed by law 1 66 The Language of the Fragment, i68. A Literal Interpretation, 178. The Philosophic Sense of the Fragment, 183. Supplemen- tary Note: The Earlier Interpretations of the Fragment, 193. Conclusion MILESIAN SPECULATION AND THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 1 99 Appendices I. THE USAGE OF THE TERM KOSMOSW EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY SIQ II. THE AUEIPON OF ANAXIMANDER 23 note: THE FIRST GREEK PROSE TREATISE 24O Indices SUBJECTS 243 NAMES AND CITATIONS 245 GREEK TERMS 25O ILLUSTRATIONS ANAXIMANDER Frontispiece PLATE I. BABYLONIAN MAP OF THE WORLD Facing page 88 PLATE n. Facing page 8g A. PLANISPHERE OF BIANCHINI B. CREATION WITH COMPASSES - PREFACE THIS essay has grown out of a study of the poem of Parmenides which was begun a number of years ago. I had come to the con- clusion that Parmenides' argument was to be understood only against the background of a new rational view of the physical universe, a view which was not his own creation, but which permitted him to take for granted such basic conceptions as the true Nature of things {(f)vais) and the ordered structure of the World {Koayios:) . What I have tried to do here is to reconstruct this pre-Parmenidean view, proceeding on the assumption that its source must be located in sixth-century Miletus. This assumption is implicit in all the ancient accounts of the origins of Greek philosophy, and seems to be justified by the radical contrast between the physical ideas of Homer and Hesiod on the one hand, and those of Anaximander and Anaximenes on the other. The view of the historical development presented here differs from the traditional scheme in only two respects. I have discounted the originality of Pythagoras as a figment—or at least an exaggeration— of the Hellenistic imagination. In other words, so far as the study of nature is concerned, I have treated the Italian school as an offshoot of the Ionian philosophy and not as its rival. Furthermore, the scale on which the three Milesians are depicted is not as uniform as it generally appears. In the monumental style of ancient historiography, the Milesians are presented as three statues of the same size and rank, standing at the head of a long gallery of peers. I have tried to adjust the magnitude of the figures to the importance of their role in the history of ideas. Thales and Anaximenes still have their respective places next to Anaximander, as his precursor and disciple. But they are dwarfed by the comparison to the master. Another deviation from the usual treatment is dictated by the scope of the essay. In dealing with Heraclitus and Parmenides (and, even more, with their successors) I have largely neglected the fundamentally new ideas which are their characteristic achievement. Since this is not a history of early Greek philosophy but a study of the Milesian cos- mology, later thinkers must be regarded here primarily as the heirs and debtors of the Milesians. I would like to mention one recent publication, The Presocratic XU PREFACE Philosophers, by G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven (Cambridge, 1957), which reached me too late for systematic reference in the notes. On several points the authors' close analysis of the evidence has led me to re- formulate my own position. Their work provides an important state- ment on many of the questions discussed here, and should be compared in extenso. A number of other relevant studies have appeared since my manu- script was completed, while a few earlier ones have only recently come to my attention. In one or two cases a new discussion would now be called for. Probably the most important example of this kind is Pro- fessor W. K. C. Guthrie's article on "The Presocratic World-Picture," Harvard Theological Review, XLV (1952), 87, which I encountered only after the book had gone to press. His suggestion that the Koaixos was from the beginning distinguished from the circumambient divine stuff or vepiexov—and hence that the Stoic distinction between /cda/xo? and TO Trdv is really pre-Socratic—seems to me very plausible, and I would now want to take up this idea in Appendix I. (I think it is already implicit in Appendix II.) I could scarcely be in more complete agree- ment with Professor Guthrie's general thesis, that "a common picture of the nature of the Universe, of living creatures, and of divinity was shared by a surprising number of Greek philosophical and religious thinkers of the 6th and early 5th centuries b.c." But I am obliged to ' part company with him when he goes on : 'This world-picture was not the creation of any one of them, but rather seems to have been assumed by all at the outset, as is also suggested by certain indications in Greek literature that it was shared by the unphilosophical multitude." That elements of one or more pre-philosophic views are incorporated in the Ionian cosmology is, I would say, agreed upon by all. But the quality which is lacking in the older world views is precisely what is most essential in the case of the philosophers : the systematic concern for rational clarity and coherence. The recent tendency to assimilate Anaximander to Hesiod—which also underlies Cornford's brilliant treatment of him in Principium Sapientiae—can only serve to blur the distinguishing features of each, by confounding the very different atti- tudes toward Nature that characterize the Greek epic poets and the early philosophers. If these first philosophers had been able to take for granted a coherent, ready-made cosmology, then they would not have been the first after all. On the other hand, once the Milesians and their successors had worked out a consistent cosmic scheme, it naturally PREFACE XllI exerted a powerful influence on the poets and on the educated public in general. Hence when we find traces of such a scheme in Euripides or in the Potidaea epitaph of 432—or in the undated Orphic poems—wc must recognize this as evidence for the diffusion of the Ionian cosmology, not for its pre-existence in the popular imagination. Acknowledgment is due to the Soprintendenza alia Antichita di Roma I for permission to reproduce the photograph of the frontispiece, to the Trustees of the British Museum for Plate I, to the Archives Photographiques, Paris, for Plate IIa, and to the Austrian National Library for Plate IIb. I wish to thank Professors Otto J. Brendel, Evelyn B. Harrison, and O. Neugebauer, as well as Professor M. Borda of the Museo Nazionale in Rome and Mr. D.J. Wiseman of the British Museum, for information concerning one or more of the monuments reproduced. As this book is the fruit of some ten years' study, it has been in- fluenced by more teachers and scholars than I can mention here. I think above all of Professors David Grene and Yves R. Simon of the University of Chicago, who first introduced me to Greek literature and philosophy—and first impressions are lasting ones. In a more immediate way, I am indebted to Professor Moses Hadas and the other members of the examining committee who read and criticized the bulk of the manuscript in its original form as a doctoral dissertation for Columbia University. The readability ofthe whole work has benefited in particular from the comments of Professor Gilbert Highet, who called my atten- tion to many an opaque argument and many a clumsy phrase. My friend Professor Martin Ostwald has often come to my assistance with excellent advice and has in addition read through a full set of proofs.