Part 21

Either because men are incredulous, or the things incredible. Cf. Zeller, Phil. Gr. i.⁴ 574 A 2. Gomperz combined this with fragment 10.

117. The fool is wont to be in a flutter at every word.

118. The most esteemed of those in estimation knows how to be on his guard; yet truly justice shall overtake forgers of lies and witnesses to them.

If the reference is to Homer, read πλάσσειν, ‘knows how to create myths.’

119. (He used to say that) Homer deserved to be cast out of the lists and flogged, and Archilochos likewise.

120. One day is equal to every other.

121. Character is a man’s guardian divinity.

122. There awaits men at death what they do not expect or think.

123. Then [it is necessary] that God raise them up, and that they become guardians of the living and the dead.

Or adopting Sauppe’s conjectures in full ‘that he become a watchful guardian....’

124. Night-walkers, wizards, bacchanals, revellers, sharers in the mysteries.

125. For what are esteemed mysteries among men they celebrate in an unholy way.

127. For if it were not to Dionysos that they made the procession and sang the song with phallic symbols, their deeds would indeed be most shameful; but Hades and Dionysos are the same, to whomever they go mad and share the revel.

128. I distinguish two kinds of sacrifices; those of men altogether purified, which would occur rarely, as Herakleitos says, in the case of a single individual, or of some very few men easily counted; secondly, those that are material and corporeal and composite through change, such as are in harmony with those who are still restrained by the body.

129. (Herakleitos fittingly called religious rites) cures (for the soul).

130. They purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash it off with mud. If any one of men should observe him doing so, he would think he was insane. And to these images they pray, just as if one were to converse with men’s houses, for they know not what gods and heroes are.

130a. If they are gods, why do ye lament them? And if ye lament them, no longer consider them gods.

The fragment in the critical notes reads: ‘To images of gods they pray, to those who do not hear, as though they might hear; to those who do not answer, as though they might not make request.’

131. All things are full of souls and of divine spirits.

132. He was wont to say that false opinion is a sacred disease, and that vision is deceitful.

133. Each one who has come to be esteemed without due grounds, ought to hide his face.

134. False opinion of progress is the stoppage of progress.

135. Their education is a second sun to those that have been educated.

136. As food is timely in famine, so opportune favour heals the need of the soul.

137. The same one was wont to say that the shortest way to glory was to become good.

138. Timaios wrote thus: So Pythagoras does not appear to have discovered the true art of words, nor yet the one accused by Herakleitos, but Herakleitos himself is the one who is the pretender.

PASSAGES IN PLATO AND ARISTOTLE REFERRING TO HERAKLEITOS.

Plato, Theaet. 160 D. Homer, and Herakleitos, and the whole company which say that all things are in motion and in a state of flux. Cf. 152 D H.