S.Y. LURIA DEMOCRITUS TEXTS TRANSLATION INVESTIGATIONS English translation by C.C.W. TAYLOR NAUKA PUBLISHERS Leningrad 1970 Copyright Note I have tried unsuccessfully to identify the present holder or holders of the copyright in Luria’s book, in order to seek permission for the publication of this translation. Enquiries made of the publisher in Moscow and St Petersburg and of the Society of Russian Authors in St Petersburg have failed to elicit the information sought. CCWT CONTENTS Translator’s preface Editors’ preface Abbreviations Texts Variant readings Concordance Luria – DK Index locorum Translation of texts Commentary Works of S.Y Luria relating to Democritus TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE In this volume I present a translation into English of S.Y. Luria’s edition of the fragments of Democritus and of the testimonia relating to him. The work has the sole aim of making Luria’s work available to students in the English-speaking world and in other countries worldwide who are familiar with English but not with Russian. A valuable Italian translation of Luria’s work (Democrito, Raccolta dei frammenti, interpretazione e commentario di Salomon Luria, ed. G. Girgenti et al., Edizione Bompioni, Milan) appeared in 2007, but my impression of the current level of comprehension of Italian, even among students of ancient philosophy, convinces me that, regrettably, only an English translation can expect to reach a truly worldwide audience. Our author’s full name, spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet, is Соломон Яковлевич Лурье, to which the closest approximation in the Roman alphabet is ‘Solomon Yakovlevich Lurye’. However, in publications in languages using the Roman alphabet. Including the appropriate portions of the present volume, he uniformly spells his surname ‘Luria’. That spelling, which is standard in publications using the Roman alphabet, is used throughout this volume. I have translated into English i) the preface by the original editorial board (pp. 5-10 of the original publication), ii) Luria’s collection of texts (pp. 13-167), iii) his notes on the texts (pp. 385-615), iv) the list of his publications relating to Democritus (pp. 616-617). In translating the texts I have not re-translated Luria’s Russian, but have translated the texts directly, comparing my version as required with Luria’s Russian and with the Italian version. Any significant discrepancies between my version and Luria’s are noted in the translator’s footnotes to the texts, enclosed in square brackets. I have reproduced Luria’s apparatus criticus (pp. 168-186) without translation, on the ground that it is likely to be useful only to those who have sufficient grasp of the ancient languages to appreciate the significance of the textual variants. Nor have I translated the remaining editorial matter (pp. 618 ff.), consisting of i) concordance between the collections of Luria and Diels-Kranz (pp. 623-628), ii) index locorum (pp. 629-652), iii) list of sources (pp. 653-662), iv) table of contents (pp. 653-654), v) addenda and corrigenda (pp. 618-619), vi) further errata (pp. 655-656). Of the above, I have included i-ii in the original, as readily usable by the reader who knows no Russian, and have omitted iii-vi altogether: iii is replaced by my own list of abbreviations, all the headings under iv appear in translation at the appropriate points of the text and notes, and under v and vi, the only two items of significance for the interpretation of the text (referring to Luria’s notes on nos. 71 and 376), are discussed in the translator’s notes on those passages. All contributions by the translator, whether in the form of footnotes to the texts or to Luria’s notes, or of insertions in the text, are enclosed in square brackets. These contributions include correction of some errors in Taylor 1999. Footnotes are numbered consecutively throught the volume. Those in square brackets are the translator’s, those without square brackets are Luria’s. In his notes Luria quotes extensively from ancient sources, in the original languages, and from modern discussions, sometimes in the original language and sometimes in Russian translation. I have translated all these quotations into English. When comprehension of the note requires reproduction of the original of the quoted text I have accompanied it with the English translation in square brackets. Titles of works in Russian, including articles, monographs and periodicals, are translated into English; titles of works in other languages are cited in the original language. All quoted Greek and most quoted Russian is transliterated. I am especially indebted to David Sedley for his generosity in lending me his copy of Luria ‘sine die’. Without that assistance I should not have been able to undertake this work. For setting up the online version I am grateful to Solomon Young, of the IT department of Corpus Christi College. I am most grateful to Terry Irwin, Peter Momtchiloff and Andy Davies for their support and advice. Corpus Christi College, C.C.W. Taylor Oxford, U.K. January 2016 Friends, do not mourn at my tomb, For I do not truly lie here as bones and dust; Rather my thoughts remain for ever With all who have well understood the wisdom of the Greeks. Epitaph of S.Y Luria, Lvov. From the Editorial Board This volume consists of a collection, with commentary, of passages from the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus and testimonia relating to him. None of the works of the greatest materialist of antiquity has come down to us. The fragments of his works have been preserved only in the form of quotations and comments by ancient and later authors. The task of reconstructing the scientific legacy and the world-view of Democritus is especially difficult, both because of the fragmentary state of the surviving texts and because the great mass of testimonia about him has been preserved by authors far from his philosophical views or indifferent to the deep problems of Democritean philosophy. This collection of passages of Democritus and testimonia about him was compiled by the famous specialist on the history of ancient culture and philosophy, Prof. S.Y. Luria.1 His work on Democritus began in 1920 and continued till the last days of his life. The manuscript of the collection of passages, which was virtually complete, is here published posthumously. Unfortunately Luria was unable to complete the extensive introduction to the collection, in which he had planned to set out the principles of his selection of texts and of their attribution to Democritus. Several preliminary drafts of that introduction survive. In the most complete of them Luria writes: ‘This work presents a major new collection of passages from Democritus and testimonia on him, with Russian translation. Until now the largest collection of the fragments of Democritus has been Diels’ Die Fragments der Vorsokratiker, published in 1903. Diels, who had minutely studied the whole of ancient philosophy and related literature and had in virtuoso fashion revolutionised the method of study of doxographical reports of ancient philosophers (see his earlier Doxographi Graeci, 1879), wrote the classic work, after the publication of which in all serious work on ancient Greek philosophy the citations of the philosophers were made only from Diels. Diels’ book, despite its specialised character and high price, went through eight editions in Germany and was translated into several languages. Nevertheless, despite all its value, Diels’ collection is largely out of date and now possesses merely historical significance. Research, especially on Democritus, has made enormous progress since 1903. Moreover, Diels proceeded from a specific ideological standpoint. The title ‘Presocratics’ alone represents an entire programme; the highest achievement of Greek thought is recognised as that of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and their followers, and the entire role of Greek science of the classical period is reduced to preparation for Socrates and his disciples. Though Diels never says so explicitly in Die Vorsokratiker2, anyone who reads his book carefully sees that for him genuine philosophy is idealistic philosophy, and materialism is confined to the role of one of its fruitful sources. Not only in the area of logic (which is undisputed), and in that of systematic philosophy based on that formal logic (which is possible), but in the area of the exact sciences, from the point of view of Diels and those who share his opinion Aristotle is the highest point of antiquity. This despite the fact that Aristotle himself did not regard himself as engaged in the area of those sciences: in his opinion ‘excessively persistent study of the liberal sciences in full detail is demeaning for a person’; one should study the sciences ‘only within certain 1 [Throughout this introduction the editors refer to the author by initials plus surname. In accordance with the convention current in Western academic publications, the translator has used this style for the first reference only, subsequent references being by surname only.] 2 This is said in another book of his, Elementum, Leipzig, 1899, pp. 1 ff., which contains a series of ironical attacks on materialism (Darwinism). limits’, obviously to the extent necessary for constructing one’s philosophical world-view.3 Galileo showed that in the area of natural science Aristotle’s science was a regression by comparison with that of Democritus. Only in the areas of mathematics and astronomy was Aristotle’s science superior to that of Democritus; and that was not due to any contributions by Aristotle himself, but to the fact that in the time between Democritus and Aristotle these sciences had made some progress at the hands of Theaetetus, Eudoxus and others, while indeed giving up some major achievements which had been made in the fifth century and especially in the doctrine of Democritus.