Fragments

For he says that the part of it that is contracted and condensed is cold, and that what is rare and relaxed (this, roughly, is the name he gives it, word and all) is hot.note

Just as our soul, he says, being air, holds us together, so breath and air encompass the whole world.

For now the floor is clean, and everyone’s hands, / and the cups. Someone sets woven garlands around our heads, / another hands round sweet-smelling perfume in a bowl; / the mixing bowl stands full of good cheer, / and more wine is ready, which says it will never let us down, / mellow in the jars, with the scent of flowers. / In our midst the frankincense sends up its holy fragrance; / there is water, cool and sweet and clean; / golden loaves are set beside us, and a splendid table / laden with cheese and rich honey; / the altar in the middle is decked all over with flowers, / and song and festivity fill the house all around.note

But suppose someone wins a victory by speed of foot, / or in the pentathlon, where the precinct of Zeus lies / beside the streams of Pisa at Olympia, or in wrestling, / or by taking on the painful art of boxing, / or in that fearsome contest they call the pankration. / Then he would be more glorious in his fellow citizens’ eyes, / and would win a conspicuous front seat at the games, / and he would have his meals at public expense / from the city, and a gift to keep as an heirloom. / Or if he won with horses, he would get all these things too, / though he is not as deserving as I am. For better than the strength / of men or of horses is our wisdom. / But this custom is quite thoughtless, and it is not just / to rank strength above good wisdom.note

They learned useless luxuries from the Lydians / while they were still free of hateful tyranny, / and went to the marketplace in robes all of purple, / no fewer than a thousand in all, / boastful, glorying in their handsome hair, / drenched in the scent of elaborate perfumes.note

Whether it was Pheidon of Argos who first struck coinage … or the Lydians, as Xenophanes says.

Nor would anyone mix wine in the cup by pouring the wine in first, / but water, and the wine on top.

For you sent the thigh of a kid and got back the fat leg / of a fatted bull, a prize fit for a man to receive, / a man whose fame will reach all Greece and will not cease / as long as the race of Greek songs endures.

Now I will move on to another account, and show the way. / * / And once, they say, as he was passing a puppy that was being beaten, / he took pity and spoke these words: / “Stop, don’t beat it. It really is the soul of a friend; / I recognized it when I heard it cry out.”note

Sixty-seven years there have been already / tossing my thoughts up and down the land of Greece; / and from my birth until then there were twenty-five more besides, / if I know how to speak truly about these things.

much feebler than an aged man.

Since from the beginning all have learned from Homer . . .

Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything / that is a shame and a reproach among human beings: / stealing, adultery, and deceiving one another.

as they told of very many lawless deeds of the gods: / stealing, adultery, and deceiving one another.

Some have written that Homer was older than Hesiod, among them Philochorus and Xenophanes; others that he was younger.

But mortals suppose that gods are born, / and have clothes and a voice and a body like their own.

The Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed and black, / the Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired.

And Bacchic boughs of pine stand around the close-built house.

The gods did not reveal all things to mortals from the beginning; / but in time, by searching, they find out better.

According to some, he [Thales] seems to have been the first to study the stars and to foretell solar eclipses and solstices, as Eudemus says in his history of astronomy. This is why both Xenophanes and Herodotus admire him.note

As Xenophanes of Colophon says he has heard, one hundred and fifty-four (that is, Epimenides lived that many years).note

That is why Xenophanes calls him [Simonides] a skinflint.note

This is the sort of thing to say by the fire in wintertime, / lying on a soft couch, well fed, / drinking sweet wine and nibbling chickpeas: / “Who are you, my good man, and where are you from? How old are you? / How old were you when the Mede came?”note

One god, greatest among gods and humans, / not at all like mortals in body or in thought.

All of him sees, all of him thinks, and all of him hears.

But without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind.

He always remains in the same place, not moving at all, / and it is not fitting for him to go now here, now there.

For all things come from earth, and all things end in earth.

This upper limit of the earth is seen at our feet, / touching the air; but the part below goes down without limit.

All things that come to be and grow are earth and water.

The sea is the source of water, and the source of wind. / For neither would blasts of wind arise in the clouds, / blowing out from within, without the great sea, / nor the streams of rivers, nor the rainwater of the sky; / but the great sea is the begetter of clouds and winds / and rivers.

and the sun, sweeping overhead and warming the earth.

And she whom they call Iris is by nature a cloud as well, / purple and red and yellow-green to look at.note

For we are all born from earth and water.

As for the clear truth, no man has been, nor will there be anyone, / who knows it about the gods and about all the things I speak of. / For even if he should happen to say, as fully as can be, what is actually so, / still he himself does not know it; opinion is fashioned over all things.

Let these things be believed as resembling what is true.

all the things that have shown themselves for mortals to look upon . . .

And in certain caves, too, water drips down.note

If god had not made yellow honey, they would say / that figs are far sweeter.

cherry (the tree), having found it in the On Nature of Xenophanes.

brotachos is what the Ionians call the frog [and Aristophanes says so], and it occurs in Xenophanes.note

siros (a certain writer of silloi writes the long “si” with the “r”, lengthening it perhaps, it seems to me; by “writer of silloi” I here mean Xenophanes, Timon and others.)note

That is why one must follow what is common, that is, what is shared, for “common” is his word for “shared.” But although the logos is common, the many live as though they had a private understanding of their own.

[on the size of the sun] the width of a human foot.

If happiness lay in bodily pleasures, we would call cattle happy when they find bitter vetch to eat.

In accordance with the proportion of the seasons, the seven is gathered together with respect to the moon, and divided with respect to the Bears, two signs of immortal Memory [?].note

They purify themselves in vain with blood when they are defiled by it, as if someone who had stepped into mud were to wash himself off with mud. Anyone who noticed him doing this would think him mad. And they pray to these statues as if someone were to chat with houses, knowing nothing of what gods and heroes are.note

The sun is not only, as Heraclitus says, new each day, but always new, continuously.

If all things turned to smoke, noses would tell them apart.

What opposes brings together; from things that differ comes the most beautiful harmony; and all things come to be through strife.

Donkeys would choose sweepings rather than gold.

This was also the same as what is said by Heraclitus the Obscure: combinations: wholes and not wholes, drawn together drawn apart, in tune out of tune; and from all things one, and from one all things.

For every creeping thing is driven to pasture by the blow of the god.

On those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow. And souls, too, are exhaled from what is moist.

For a person of taste should be neither dirty nor unkempt, nor delight in mud, as Heraclitus puts it.

To whom, then, does Heraclitus of Ephesus prophesy? To night-wanderers, magi, bacchants, maenads, initiates. These are the ones he threatens with what comes after death; for these he prophesies the fire. For the mysteries customary among human beings are entered into in an unholy way.note

For if it were not for Dionysus that they held the procession and sang the hymn to the shameful parts, what they did would be most shameless. But Hades and Dionysus are the same, the one for whom they rave and hold their Bacchic revels.note

How could anyone escape the notice of what never sets?

For the many do not understand such things as they encounter, nor do they know them once they have learned them; they only think they do.

If one does not expect the unexpected, one will not find it out, since it cannot be tracked down and there is no path to it.

Knowing neither how to listen nor how to speak.

Once born, they want to live and to meet their deaths, or rather to rest, and they leave children behind to become deaths in turn.

Death is all we see when awake; all we see asleep is sleep.

Those who seek gold dig up a lot of earth and find little.

They would not have known the name of Justice if these things did not exist.

Gods and humans honor those slain in war.

For greater deaths win greater shares.

A human being in the night kindles a light for himself when he has died, quenched [in his eyes]. Living, he touches the dead when asleep, quenched in his eyes; awake, he touches the sleeper.note

What awaits human beings when they die is what they neither expect nor imagine.

For what the one of greatest repute knows, and guards, is only what is reputed. And yet Justice will surely catch the makers of lies and those who bear witness to them.

For the best choose one thing in place of all others: everlasting fame among mortals. But the many have stuffed themselves like cattle.

This world-order, the same for all, no god and no human being made. It always was and is and will be: ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.

The turnings of fire: first sea; and of sea, half is earth, half fiery whirlwind. What he is saying, in effect, is that fire, by the logos and god that governs all things, is turned through air into moisture, the seed, as it were, of the world’s ordering, which he calls sea. From this, in turn, come earth and sky and all they contain. How they are taken back again and turned to fire, he shows clearly in these words: Sea is poured out and measured into the same proportion as it was before it became earth.note

One thing, the only wise thing, is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.note

It is law, too, to obey the counsel of one.

Those without understanding, even when they have heard, are like the deaf. The saying bears witness against them: present, they are absent.

For men who love wisdom must be inquirers into a great many things, according to Heraclitus.

For souls it is death to become water, and for water it is death to become earth; but from earth water comes to be, and from water soul.

if only we believe Heraclitus of Ephesus, who says that pigs wash in mud, and farmyard birds in dust or ashes.

[Thales] seems, according to some, to have been the first to study the stars . . . Heraclitus and Democritus also bear witness to this.

In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutames, who is of more account than the rest.note

Much learning does not teach one to have sense. Otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and Xenophanes and Hecataeus as well.note

For the wise thing is one: to know the judgment by which all things are steered through all things.

Homer, he used to say, deserved to be thrown out of the contests and beaten with a stick, and Archilochus likewise.note

Arrogance must be put out sooner than a blaze.

The people must fight for the law as for their city wall.

You would not find the limits of the soul in your going, even if you traveled every road: so deep is its logos.

Conceit is a sacred disease, he said, and sight deceives.note

Let us not make random guesses about the greatest things.

So the bow’s name is life, but its work is death.note

One man is ten thousand to me, if he is the best.

So Heraclitus says that the all is one: divisible indivisible, generated ungenerated, mortal immortal, logos eternity, father son, god just. Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.note

They do not understand how, differing from itself, it agrees with itself: a back-turning harmony, as of the bow and the lyre.note

Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces on a board: the kingship belongs to a child.note

War is the father of all and the king of all. Some it has shown to be gods, others humans; some it has made slaves, others free.

An unseen harmony is stronger than a visible one.

Whatever can be seen, heard, learned: these are the things I prize most.

People are deceived about the knowledge of visible things in much the same way as Homer, who was wiser than all the Greeks. For he too was deceived by boys who were killing lice and said, “What we saw and caught, we leave behind; what we neither saw nor caught, we carry with us.”note

The teacher of most people is Hesiod. They are sure he knew a great many things—he who did not recognize day and night. For they are one.

Both good and bad. Doctors, at any rate, who cut and burn everywhere, cruelly tormenting the sick, demand a fee, though they deserve to get nothing from the sick, since they produce the same things, the goods and the diseases.

In the fuller’s press the way straight and crooked (the turning of the device called the screw in the fuller’s press is straight and crooked, for it moves upward and round in a circle at once) is one and the same.note

The sea is the purest and the foulest water: for fish it is drinkable and life-giving, for humans undrinkable and deadly.

Immortals mortals, mortals immortals: living the death of those, having died the life of those.

Before one who is there they rise up and become wakeful guardians of the living and the dead.

The thunderbolt steers all things.

He calls it [the fire] want and surfeit.

For fire, he says, will come upon all things and judge and seize them.

The god: day night, winter summer, war peace, surfeit hunger (all the opposites—that is the meaning). He changes like fire, which, when it is mixed with spices, is named after the scent of each.

And for this reason Heraclitus fittingly called them cures, since they would cure what is dreadful and set souls free from the misfortunes of coming-to-be.

Of sacrifices, then, I set down two kinds. The first are those of people who have been completely purified, such as might rarely happen in the case of a single man, as Heraclitus says, or of a few men who are easily counted.

How much better, then, has Heraclitus judged human opinions to be children’s toys.

One should also remember the one who forgets where the road leads.

The logos they are most continually in touch with, the one that governs the whole—with this they are at odds; and the things they meet every day seem strange to them.

One must not act and speak like people asleep; for even then we think we are acting and speaking.

One must not be like children of their parents, which in plain terms means “as we have received it.”

Heraclitus, I think, says that those asleep are workers and fellow workers in what happens in the world.

Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of earth, and earth that of water.

Hence Heraclitus too said that for souls it is delight or death to become wet, and that their delight is the fall into coming-to-be; and elsewhere he said that we live their death and they live our death.

For human character has no insight, but divine character has.

A man is called a fool by a spirit, as a child is by a man.

One must know that war is common, and justice is strife, and that all things come about through strife and are ordained [necessity?].note

The rhetoricians’ introductory teaching has all its principles tending toward this, and, as Heraclitus says, is the ringleader of swindlers.note

The most beautiful of apes is ugly compared with the human race.

The wisest of humans will look like an ape beside a god, in wisdom and beauty and everything else.

By changing it rests, and it is weariness to toil for the same ones and be ruled.note

It is hard to fight against passion: whatever it wants, it buys at the price of soul.

But most divine things, as Heraclitus says, escape being known through lack of trust.

A dullard tends to get excited at every word.

And the same thing is present as living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these, having changed, are those, and those, having changed again, are these.

Heraclitus says that for those who are awake there is one common world, but that each of those asleep turns away into a private one.

All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods.

The Sibyl, with raving mouth, according to Heraclitus, uttering things without laughter, without ornament, without perfume, reaches across a thousand years with her voice because of the god.note

The lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor hides, but gives a sign.note

For the sun will not overstep its measures; if it does, the Erinyes, helpers of Justice, will find it out.note

For it is better to hide ignorance, but that is hard when one is relaxed and over wine.

For corpses are more fit to be thrown out than dung.

For dogs too bark at anyone they don’t know.

Souls perceive by smell in Hades.

If there were no sun, it would be night, as far as the other stars are concerned.

. . . cycles; the sun, as their overseer and watcher, is to mark off and umpire and display and bring to light the changes and the seasons, which bring all things, according to Heraclitus.

I searched myself.

To god all things are beautiful and good and just, but humans have taken some things to be unjust and others just.

For beginning and end are common on the circumference of a circle.

For what mind or sense do they have? They trust the people’s bards and take the crowd for their teacher, not knowing that the many are bad and the few are good.

On this ground Heraclitus says that Homer was an astronomer, and also in the lines where he says, “No man, I tell you, has ever escaped his fate,” and so on.note

One day is equal to every day.

Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for people if they have souls that don’t understand their language.note

Of all those whose accounts I have heard, no one gets so far as to recognize that the wise thing is set apart from all.

It is better to hide ignorance than to bring it out into the open [= 95?].

It is not better for people to get whatever they want.

Disease makes health pleasant; evil, good; hunger, fullness; weariness, rest.

Understanding is the greatest excellence, and wisdom is to speak what is true and to act according to nature, paying heed to it.

Understanding is common to all.

Those who speak with sense must hold fast to what is common to all, as a city holds to its law, and much more firmly. For all human laws are nourished by one, the divine law; for it has as much power as it wishes, and is enough for all, and more than enough.note

The soul has a logos that increases itself.

All people have a share in knowing themselves and in understanding.

When a man gets drunk, he is led along by a boy not yet grown, stumbling, not noticing where he is going, because his soul is wet.

A dry soul is wisest and best.

Character is a person’s guardian spirit.note

The limits of dawn and evening are the Bear and, opposite the Bear, the boundary-marker of bright Zeus.note

The Ephesians would deserve to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to those not yet grown, for they threw out Hermodorus, the most valuable man among them, saying, “Let no one among us be the most valuable; or if anyone is, let him be so elsewhere and among others.”note

Approaching—Heraclitus.note

Nature, according to Heraclitus, loves to hide.

And it would also seem irrational if the whole heaven and each of its parts were all in order and proportion, in shapes and powers and revolutions, while in the principles there were nothing of the kind, but instead the fairest [the] world-order, says Heraclitus, is like sweepings poured out at random.

Even the barley drink separates if it is not stirred.note

Cold things grow warm, warm grows cold, wet grows dry, parched grows moist.

The mares that carry me, as far as my heart could wish, / were taking me, once they had led me and set me on the far-famed road / of the divinity, the road that carries the man who knows through all things. / On it I was carried, for on it the very shrewd mares carried me, / straining at the chariot, and maidens led the way. / The axle in its hubs gave out the shrill sound of a pipe / as it glowed (for it was driven on by two whirling / wheels, one on either side), whenever they hurried to escort me, / the daughters of the Sun, who had left the house of Night / for the light, pushing the veils back from their heads with their hands. / There stand the gates of the paths of Night and Day, / held between a lintel above and a threshold of stone. / The gates themselves, high in the air, are filled with great doors.note

Come now, I will tell you—and you, once you have heard it, carry my word away— / which are the only roads of inquiry there are for thinking: / the one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, / is the path of Persuasion (for it follows Truth); / the other, that it is not and that it must not be— / this, I tell you, is a path wholly beyond learning. / For you could not know what is not (it cannot be done) / nor point it out.

Look at things which, though absent, are firmly present to the mind. / For it will not cut off what is from holding on to what is, / neither scattering everywhere in every way throughout the world / nor gathering together.

It is all one to me / where I begin; for I will come back there again.

What is there for speaking and thinking must be; for it can be, / but nothing cannot. This I bid you consider. / For I hold you back from this first road of inquiry, / and then from the one that mortals who know nothing / invent, two-headed. Helplessness in their / breasts steers their wandering mind, and they are carried along, / deaf and blind alike, dazed, undiscerning tribes, / who think that to be and not to be are the same / and not the same, and the path of all of them turns back on itself.

For never shall this be forced through: that things that are not, are. / But you, hold your thought back from this road of inquiry.

Only one account of the road / still remains: that it is. On this road there are signs, / very many: that what is is ungenerated and imperishable, / whole, of a single kind, unshaken and without end. / It never was, nor will be, since it is now, all together, / one, continuous. For what birth will you seek for it? / How and from where did it grow? * Nor from what is not will I allow / you to say or think it; for it cannot be said or thought / that it is not. And what need would have stirred it / to grow later rather than earlier, starting from nothing? / So it must either be completely or not at all.

But since all things have been named light and night, / and the names that match their powers have been given to these things and to those, / all is full of light and invisible night together, / both equal, since neither has any share in nothing.

You will know the nature of the aether, and all the signs in the aether, / and the destructive works of the pure, bright / torch of the sun, and where they came from; / and you will learn the wandering works of the round-eyed moon / and her nature; and you will know too the heaven that holds all around, / from where [for] it grew, and how Necessity led and bound it / to hold the limits of the stars.

how earth and sun and moon / and the common aether and the Milky Way and furthest / Olympus and the hot might of the stars were set in motion / to come to be.

For the narrower rings were filled with unmixed fire, / those next to them with night, and a portion of flame is shot out among them. / In the middle of these is the divinity who steers all things; / for she rules over hateful birth and mixing in everything, / sending the female to mix with the male, and in turn the opposite, / the male with the female.

First of all the gods she devised Eros.

shining by night, wandering around the earth, a borrowed lightnote

always gazing toward the rays of the sun

For as each at any time holds the mixture of the much-wandering limbs, / so mind comes to human beings; for the same thing / is what the nature of the limbs thinks in human beings, / in all and in each; for what predominates is thought.

on the right, boys; on the left, girlsnote

When woman and man mix the seeds of Venus together, / the power that shapes them in the veins from different blood, / if it keeps a proper balance, forms well-made bodies. / But if, when the seed is mixed, the powers fight / and do not make a single power in the mixed body, they will cruelly / torment the sex of the one being born with a double seed.

So, according to opinion, these things came to be and now are, / and hereafter, having grown from this, they will come to an end; / and to each of them humans have given a name as a mark.

For having shown that if what is had no size, it would not even be, he adds: But if it is, each thing must have some size and thickness, and one part of it must be at some distance from another. And the same account holds for the part that projects in front. For that too will have size, and some part of it will project in front. Now it is the same thing to say this once and to keep saying it forever; for no such part of it will be the last, nor will one part ever fail to stand in front of another. So if there are many things, they must be both small and large: so small as to have no size, so large as to be unlimited.

For if it were added to something else that is, he says, it would not make it any larger. For if it has no size, and is added, it cannot contribute anything to size. And so what is added would already be nothing. And if, when it is taken away, the other thing is no smaller, and again does not grow when it is added, clearly what was added was nothing, and so was what was taken away.

If there are many things, they must be just as many as they are, neither more nor fewer. And if they are as many as they are, they will be limited. If there are many things, the things that are are unlimited. For there are always other things between the things that are, and again others between those. And so the things that are are unlimited.

Zeno does away with motion when he says: What moves moves neither in the place where it is nor in the place where it is not.

Whatever was always was and always will be. For if it came to be, there must have been nothing before it came to be. Now if there was nothing, nothing could ever come to be out of nothing.

Since, then, it did not come to be, it is and always was and always will be, and it has no beginning or end but is unlimited. For if it had come to be, it would have a beginning (for it would have begun coming to be at some time) and an end (for it would have finished coming to be at some time). But if it neither began nor ended, and always was and always will be, it has no beginning or end. For it is not possible for anything to be always unless it is all.

But just as it always is, so its size too must always be unlimited.

Nothing that has a beginning and an end is either everlasting or unlimited.

If it were not one, it will have a limit against something else.

For if it were, it would be one; for if there were two, they could not be unlimited, but would have limits against each other.

So it is everlasting and unlimited and one and all alike. And it could neither perish nor grow larger nor be rearranged, nor does it feel pain or distress; for if it underwent any of these things, it would no longer be one. For if it alters, what is must be unlike, and what was before must perish, and what is not must come to be. So if the all were to become different by a single hair in ten thousand years, it would perish in the whole of time. Nor is it possible for it to be rearranged; for the arrangement that was before does not perish, nor does one that is not come to be. And since nothing is added to it, or perishes, or alters, how could any of the things that are have been rearranged? For if something became different, it would thereby have been rearranged too.

This argument, then, is the greatest sign that it is one only; but there are the following signs too. If there were many things, they would have to be just as I say the one is. For if there is earth and water and air and fire and iron and gold, and one thing living and another dead, and black and white and all the rest that people say are real—if these things really are, and we see and hear correctly, each must be just as it first seemed to us, and not change or become different, but each must always be just as it is. As it is, we say that we see and hear and understand correctly.

If, then, it is, it must be one; and being one, it must not have a body. If it had thickness, it would have parts, and would no longer be one.

For if what is is divided, he says, it moves; and if it moved, it would not be.

And you, Pausanias, son of wise-hearted Anchitus, listen.note

For narrow are the powers of grasping spread through the limbs, / and many wretched things burst in and blunt their thoughts. / Having seen only a small part of their own life, / swift to die, they rise and fly off like smoke, / convinced only of whatever each has happened upon / as they are driven every way; yet each claims to find the whole. / So these things are neither seen by men nor heard / nor grasped by the mind. But you, since you have turned aside here, / will learn no more than mortal wit has reached.

But you gods, turn the madness of those men away from my tongue, / and from holy lips channel a pure spring. / And you, much-remembered, white-armed maiden Muse, / I beg you: what is right for creatures of a day to hear, / send it, driving the well-reined chariot from the house of Reverence. / Nor shall the flowers of glorious honor force you / to take them from mortals, on condition that you boldly speak / beyond what is holy—and then sit on the heights of wisdom. / But come, observe with every means how each thing is clear, / not holding any sight in more trust than hearing, / or the roaring ear above what the tongue makes plain; / nor, from any of the other limbs by which there is a path to understanding, / hold back your trust, but understand each thing in the way it is clear.

But it pleases base men to distrust what prevails. / As the pledges of our Muse bid you, / know it, once the account has been sifted within you.

to shelter it within a silent mind.

For first hear the four roots of all things: / shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera and Aidoneus / and Nestis, who with her tears moistens the spring of mortals.note

Ungenerated: elements. In Empedocles.

And I will tell you something else: there is no birth of any of all / mortal things, nor any end in ruinous death; / there is only mixing and exchange of what has been mixed, / and birth is the name humans give to these.note

But when they come into the air mixed in the form of a man, / or of the race of wild beasts, or of bushes, / or of birds, then they say that this has come to be; / and when they are separated, they call it, in turn, an ill-starred fate. / They do not call it as is right, but I too follow custom in speaking.

death . . . the avenger.

Fools! For their thoughts do not reach far, / who expect that what was not before comes to be, / or that anything dies and is utterly destroyed.

For from what in no way is, it is impossible for anything to come to be, / and for what is to perish cannot be done and is unheard of; / for it will always be there, wherever anyone keeps pushing it.

Nor is any of the all empty or overfull.

Of the all nothing is empty; from where, then, could anything come in?

A man wise in such matters would not divine in his mind / that as long as they live what they call life, / for that long they exist, and have their bad things and their good, / but that before mortals are formed and after they are dissolved, they are nothing after all.

For as it was before, so it will be, and never, I think, / will boundless time be emptied of these two.

I will tell a double tale: at one time it grew to be one alone / out of many, at another it grew apart again to be many out of one. / Double is the birth of mortal things, and double their passing away: / the coming together of all things both begets and destroys the one, / and the other, nurtured as they grow apart again, flies apart. / And these never cease their continual exchange, / at one time all coming together into one through Love, / at another each borne apart again by the hatred of Strife. / So insofar as one has learned to grow out of many, / and again, as the one grows apart, many spring up, / in that respect they come to be, and their life is not constant; / but insofar as they never cease their continual exchange, / in that respect they always are, unmoved in a cycle.

Love

clinging Love

This is plain to see in the mass of mortal limbs: / at one time, through Love, all coming together into one— / the limbs that are the body’s lot—at the peak of flourishing life; / at another, cut apart again by evil Strifes, / they wander, each apart, on the breakers at the shore of life. / So it is too for bushes and for fish that make their homes in water, / and for beasts whose lairs are in the mountains, and for diving birds that go on wings.

But come, look at these witnesses to my earlier words, / if anything in what I said before was deficient in shape: / see the sun, warm and bright everywhere, / and all the immortal things drenched in heat and shining radiance, / and rain, in all things dark and chill; / and out of earth flow things rooted and solid. / In Wrath all things are separate in shape and apart, / but they come together in Love and long for one another. / For from these have sprung all things that were and are and will be: / trees, and men and women, / and beasts and birds and fish nourished in water, / and long-lived gods, highest in honors. / For there are just these, and running through one another / they take on different looks; so much does mixing change them.

For all these are at one with their own parts— / the shining sun and earth and heaven and sea— / all the parts of them that have strayed off and grown in mortal things. / In the same way, the things that are better suited for mixing / love one another, made alike by Aphrodite. / But hostile are those that differ most from one another / in birth and mixing and the molded forms stamped on them, / wholly unused to coming together, and very miserable / at the bidding of Strife, because it has brought about their birth.

As when painters decorate votive offerings, / men well taught in their craft by skill, / who, when they have taken pigments of many colors in their hands, / mixing them in harmony, more of some and less of others, / produce from them forms resembling all things, / creating trees and men and women / and beasts and birds and fish nourished in water / and long-lived gods, highest in honors: / so do not let deception overcome your mind into thinking that from anywhere else / comes the source of mortal things, all the countless ones that have come to light, / but know this clearly, having heard the account from a god.

fitting one peak to another, / not to complete a single path of stories,

. . . . for what must be said, it is good to say even twice.

They prevail in turn as the cycle comes round, / and they dwindle into one another and grow in their appointed turn. / For there are just these, and running through one another / they become humans and the tribes of other beasts, / at one time coming together into one world through Love, / at another each borne apart again by the hatred of Strife, / until, growing together into one, the all goes under. / So insofar as one has learned to grow out of many, / and again, as the one grows apart, many spring up, / in that respect they come to be, and their life is not constant; / but insofar as these never cease their continual exchange, / in that respect they always are, unmoved in a cycle.

There neither the swift limbs of the Sun can be made out, / nor, indeed, the shaggy might of earth, nor the sea; / so firmly is he fixed in the dense concealment of Harmony, / the round Sphere, rejoicing in the solitude around him.

But he was equal on every side and wholly unlimited, / the round Sphere, rejoicing in the solitude around him.

For no two branches spring from his back, / no feet, no swift knees, no genitals that beget, / but he was a sphere, and on every side equal to himself.

But when great Strife had grown strong in the limbs / and sprang up to claim his honors as the time was fulfilled / that has been fixed for them in turn by a broad oath . . .

For one after another all the limbs of the god quaked.

A joint binds two.

As when fig juice has fastened and bound white milk . . .note

gluing barley-meal with water . . .

But I will turn back and go to the path of songs / that I laid out before, channeling one account off from another, / that path: when Strife has reached the lowest depth / of the whirl, and Love comes to be in the middle of the eddy, / there all these things come together to be one alone, / not all at once, but willingly combining, some from one place, some from another. / And as they mixed, countless tribes of mortal things poured forth; / but many stood unmixed, alternating with those being mixed, / all that Strife still held back aloft; for not blamelessly / had it wholly withdrawn from them to the outermost limits of the circle, / but some of its limbs stayed within, while some had gone out.

And as they came together, Strife was withdrawing to the outermost edge

Earth increases its own body, and aether increases aether.

. . . Come, I will tell you first of the origin and the things as old as it, / from which all the things we now see became plain: / earth and the sea with its many waves and moist air / and Titan aether, binding all things round in a circle.

If the depths of the earth and the abundant aether were unlimited, / as has been said in vain by the tongues of many / and poured out of the mouths of those who have seen little of the whole.

the sharp-shooting sun and the gracious moon

But he, gathered into a mass, makes his round of the great sky.

And she shut off his rays / as he passed above, and cast into shadow as much of the earth / as was the breadth of the gray-eyed moon.

so the ray, striking the broad circle of the moon . . .

It shines back toward Olympus with untroubled face.

A round, borrowed light whirls about the earth.

as the hub of a chariot whirls round, the one that close to the tip . . .

For she gazes at the holy circle of her lord opposite.

And earth makes night by standing(?) in the way of the lights.

of lonely, blind-eyed night

And Iris brings from the sea wind or great rain.

and swiftly upward . . .

And many fires burn beneath the ground.

For so it chanced to run at that time, but often otherwise.

And aether, in turn, sank down into the earth with long roots.

the sea, sweat of the earth

Salt set hard, thrust by the blasts of the sun.

Where many heads sprang up without necks, / and arms wandered naked, bereft of shoulders, / and eyes roamed alone, in want of foreheads.

The limbs, still single-limbed as a result of the separating by Strife, wandered about, longing to mix with one another.

But when spirit mixed more and more with spirit, / these fell together, however each chanced to meet, / and many others besides these came into being, one after another.

shambling-footed, with countless handsnote

Many grew with faces and chests on both sides, / ox-born with the faces of men, while others, the other way round, sprang up / man-born with the heads of oxen, mixed, in part from men / and in part female in nature, fitted with shadowy limbs.

Now come: how of men and much-lamenting women / fire, as it was being separated, brought up the night-hidden shoots, / hear this; for my story is not off the mark or ignorant. / First whole-natured shapes sprang up from the earth, / having a share of both, water and heat; / these fire sent up, wanting to reach its like, / not yet showing any lovely body of limbs, / nor voice, nor the member that is native to men.

But the nature of the limbs has been torn apart: part in the man’s . . .

And upon him comes Longing too, through sight, mingling embraces

And it was poured into clean places: some become women, / when they meet with cold, and others, conversely, males, when they meet with heat.

into the cloven meadows . . . of Aphrodite

For in the warmer part the womb became the bearer of the male; / and that is why men are dark and more manly / and hairier.

On the tenth day of the eighth month white pus comes.

twice-bearing

amnion

But if your conviction on these matters is at all short of fuel, / how, when water and earth and aether and sun / were blended, the forms and colors of mortal things came to be, / as many as have now come to be, fitted together by Aphrodite . . .

how tall trees, too, and the fish in the sea

And as then Kypris, when she had moistened earth with rain, / busily preparing forms, gave them to swift fire to harden . . .note

leading the songless tribe of teeming fish

Of these, all that are compacted dense within and loose outside, / having met with such moistness in the hands of Kypris . . .

So it is in the heavy-backed shells of sea-grazing creatures, / yes, and of stone-skinned whelks and turtles; / there you will see earth dwelling on the very surface of the skin.

And trees, ever-leafed and ever-fruited, flourish / with abundance of fruit, thanks to the air, all year round.

So tall trees lay eggs: first of all, olives.

which is why pomegranates come late and apples are so lush

Wine is water from the bark, rotted in the wood.

Hair and leaves and the thick feathers of birds are the same, / and scales, that grow on sturdy limbs.

But on hedgehogs / sharp-pointed hairs bristle along their backs.

As when someone who means to go out prepares a lamp / for the wintry night, lighting a flame of blazing fire, / and fits lantern-panels that keep off winds of every kind, / which scatter the breath of the winds as they blow, / while the light, leaping out through them, as much of it as is finer, / shines across the threshold with unwearying rays: / so then the primeval fire, shut up in membranes / and fine tissues, lay in wait in the round pupil; / and these were pierced right through with wondrous channels; / they kept out the depth of water flowing around, / but let the fire through outward, as much of it as was finer.

And the gracious flame met with only a little earth

from which divine Aphrodite fashioned unwearying eyes.

Aphrodite, fitting them together with rivets of love.

From both comes one sight.

knowing that there are effluences from all things that have come to be.

So sweet seized on sweet, bitter rushed to bitter, / sour went to sour, and hot rode on hot.

Water fits better with wine, but with oil / it will not.

For the hollows of one fit together with the dense parts of the other, and from such things hard comes out of soft, as with copper mixed with tin.

and the berry of the gray elder mixes with linen

and the black color at the bottom of a river comes from the shadow, / and the same is seen in hollow caves.

In the hands of Kypris, he says, when first they grew together.

And kindly earth, in her broad-breasted crucibles, / received two of the eight parts from the gleam of Nestis, / and four from Hephaestus; and white bones came to be, / fitted together by the divine glues of Harmony.note

spine

And Earth met with these in nearly equal measure, / Hephaestus and rain and all-shining aether, / anchored in the perfect harbors of Kypris, / whether a little more of her, or less among more of them; / from these came blood and the forms of other flesh.

bell. fleshy shoot

This is how all things breathe in and out: all have bloodless / tubes of flesh stretched over the outside of the body, / and at their mouths, with close-set furrows, / the outermost surface of the skin is pierced right through, so that the blood / is kept in, but an easy passage is cut through for the air. / Then, whenever the soft blood rushes away from there, / the air comes bubbling down in a raging surge, / and when the blood leaps back, it breathes out again, just as when a girl / plays with a clepsydra of gleaming bronze: / when she puts the mouth of the pipe against her shapely hand / and dips it into the soft body of silvery water, / no water enters the vessel, but it is kept out / by the bulk of air inside, pressing on the close-set holes, / until she uncovers the packed stream; but then, / as the air gives way, the due measure of water enters.note

searching out with its nostrils the fragments of wild beasts’ limbs / and the breaths they left from their feet on the soft grass . . .

So all things have their share of breath and smells.

So, by the will of Chance, all things have thought.

And insofar as the finest things chanced to fall together.

Nourished in seas of blood that leaps against it, / where most of all is what humans call thought; / for the blood around the heart is thought for humans.

For human intelligence grows in relation to what is present.

For from these all things are fitted together and fixed, / and by these they think and feel pleasure and pain.

And as far as they have changed and grown different, so far / thinking different things always comes to them too . . .

For by earth we see earth, by water water, / by aether divine aether, and by fire destructive fire, / love by love, and strife by baneful strife.

For if you plant them firmly in your strong mind / and watch over them kindly with pure attention, / all these things will be with you throughout your life, / and you will gain many others from them; for these things themselves grow / into each character, according to the nature of each. / But if you reach out for other sorts of things, such as the countless / wretched things among men that blunt their thoughts, / they will surely leave you swiftly as time comes round, / longing to return to their own dear kind; / for know that all things have understanding and a share of thought.

All the remedies there are for ills, and defense against old age, / you will learn, since for you alone I will bring all this to pass. / You will stop the force of the tireless winds that sweep / over the earth and with their blasts lay waste the fields; / and again, if you wish, you will bring the winds back in return; / you will make, after dark rain, a timely drought / for people, and you will make, after summer drought, / tree-nourishing streams that will flow in the air; / and you will bring back from Hades the strength of a man who has died.

Friends, who live in the great town by yellow Acragas, / up on the heights of the city, caring for good deeds, / respectful harbors for strangers, untried by wickedness, / greetings! I, an immortal god, no longer mortal, / go about among you, honored by all, as is fitting, / crowned with ribbons and fresh garlands; / whenever I come with these to flourishing towns, / I am revered by men and women; and they follow me / in their thousands, asking where the path to profit lies, / some wanting prophecies, while others, for diseases / of every kind, ask to hear a healing word, / having long been pierced through by harsh pains.note

But why do I dwell on these things, as if I were achieving something great, / if I surpass mortal, much-perishing humans?

Friends, I know that there is truth in the words / I shall speak out; but very hard it is / for men, and grudged, the onset of conviction upon the mind.

There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, / eternal, sealed with broad oaths: / whenever someone in his errors stains his own limbs with bloodshed, / or, obeying Strife, errs and swears a false oath— / spirits, who have been allotted long-lasting life— / he must wander three times ten thousand seasons away from the blessed, / being born over that time as every kind of mortal form, / exchanging one hard path of life for another. / For the force of aether chases them into the sea, / the sea spits them out onto the ground of earth, earth into the rays / of the blazing sun, and the sun hurls them into the eddies of aether; / one receives them from another, and all loathe them. / Of these I too am now one, an exile from the gods and a wanderer, / who put my trust in raving Strife.

She loathes intolerable Necessity.note

I wept and wailed when I saw the unfamiliar place.

From what honor, and from what a height of bliss, / having fallen thus to earth, I go about among mortals.

We have come under this roofed cave . . .

. . . a joyless place, / where Murder and Wrath and tribes of other Dooms, / and parching diseases and rottings and works that flow away / wander in darkness over the meadow of Ruin.

There were Earth-Maid and far-seeing Sun-Maid, / bloody Contention and grave-eyed Harmony, / Beauty and Ugliness, Speed and Delay, / lovely Truth and dark-haired Obscurity.

Growth and Decay, Rest and Waking, / Motion and Stillness, much-crowned Greatness / and Squalor, Silence and Voice . . .

Oh, oh! Wretched race of mortals, luckless race, / from such strifes and such groans you were born!

For out of living things it made dead ones, changing their forms.

wrapping them in an alien tunic of flesh.

Among beasts they become lions that make their lairs in the mountains and sleep on the ground, / and among fair-leaved trees, laurels.

For them there was no god Ares, nor Battle-Din, / nor Zeus the king, nor Cronus, nor Poseidon, / but Kypris the queen. / Her they sought to win with pious images, / with painted figures and perfumes of intricate scent, / with offerings of pure myrrh and fragrant frankincense, / pouring libations of golden honey onto the ground. / The altar was not drenched with the sheer slaughter of bulls; / no, this was the greatest defilement among human beings: / to tear out the life and eat the goodly limbs.

Among them was a man of surpassing knowledge, / who had won the greatest wealth of mind, / master above all of every kind of wise work; / for whenever he reached out with all his mind, / he easily saw each one of all the things that are, / in ten, even twenty, human lifetimes.note

And all were tame and gentle toward human beings, / both beasts and birds, and kindliness blazed.

For if, for the sake of any creature of a day, immortal Muse, / it pleased you to let our cares pass through your mind, / now once again stand by me as I pray, Calliope, / as I unfold a good account of the blessed gods.

Happy the one who has won the wealth of divine understanding, / wretched the one who cares for a dark opinion about the gods.

It is not possible to bring it near, within reach of our eyes, / or to grasp it with our hands—the ways by which the broadest / highway of persuasion enters human minds.

For he is not fitted out with a human head on his limbs; / no two branches spring from his back, / no feet, no swift knees, no hairy genitals; / he is only mind, holy and beyond speaking, / darting through the whole world with swift thoughts.

But what is lawful for all stretches unbroken through the wide-ruling / aether and through the boundless light.

Will you not stop this harsh-sounding slaughter? Do you not see / that you are devouring one another in the heedlessness of your minds?

The father lifts up his own son, who has changed his form, / and slaughters him with a prayer, the great fool; and the others come forward, / begging the sacrificers; but he, deaf to their cries, / slaughters him and prepares an evil feast in his halls. / In the same way a son seizes his father, and children their mother, / and tearing out their life they devour the flesh they love.

drawing off the soul with bronze

Alas that the pitiless day did not destroy me first, / before I contrived with my lips the cruel deeds of eating!

to keep away altogether from the leaves of Phoebus’ laurel.

Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands off beans!

Him neither the roofed halls of aegis-bearing Zeus / would gladden, nor the roof of dread Hecate, punisher of wrongdoers

cutting from five springs in unwearying bronze.note

to fast from wickedness.

Therefore, since you are distraught with harsh wickedness, / you will never relieve your hearts of wretched sorrows.

But at the end they become prophets and poets and physicians / and leaders among human beings who live on earth, / and from there they spring up as gods, highest in honors.

sharing hearth with the other immortals, sharing their table, / free of human sorrows, exempt, unwearied.

the earth that wraps mortals round.note

cloud-gatherer

the liver, rich in blood.

life-giving. (Aphrodite)

Old age “the evening of life” or “the sunset of life.”

Baubo. (belly)note

So the unborn child seems to be completed in seven times seven days, as Empedocles hints in the Purifications.

Nature in the world was fitted together out of unlimiteds and limiters—both the world as a whole and everything in it.note

Necessarily, the things that are must all be either limiters or unlimiteds or both limiters and unlimiteds; but they could not be unlimiteds only, or limiters only. Since, then, they plainly come neither from limiters alone nor from unlimiteds alone, it is clear that both the world and the things in it were fitted together out of limiters and unlimiteds. What happens in actual things shows this too. Those of them made from limiters set limits; those made from both limiters and unlimiteds both set limits and do not; and those made from unlimiteds will plainly be unlimited.

For there will not be anything that is going to know at all, if all things are unlimited.

And indeed all things that are known have number; for nothing whatever can be thought or known without it.

Number, indeed, has two kinds of its own, odd and even, and a third, mixed from both, even-odd. Each of the two kinds has many forms, which each thing signifies of itself.

Concerning nature and harmony, this is how it is. The being of things, which is eternal, and nature itself admit of divine and not human knowledge—except that none of the things that are and are known by us could have come to be, if the being of the things from which the world is composed, the limiters and the unlimiteds, had not been there already. But since these principles were there and were neither alike nor of the same kind, it would have been impossible for them to be set in order, unless harmony had come upon them, in whatever way it came about. Things that were alike and of the same kind had no need of harmony; but things that were unlike, not of the same kind and not of equal rank, must be locked together by such a harmony, if they are to be held in a world.

The first thing fitted together, the one, in the middle of the sphere, is called the hearth.

The head [brain?] is for intellect, the heart for soul and sensation, the navel for rooting and first growth, the genitals for seed [and] its sowing and for begetting. The brain signifies the principle of the human being, the heart that of the animal, the navel that of the plant, the genitals that of all together; for all things both flourish and sprout.

The world is one, and it began to come to be from the middle, and from the middle upward through the same stages as downward. For the things above the middle lie in the reverse position to those below. For to the lowest the middle is just like the highest, and the rest likewise. For both stand in the same relation to the middle, except insofar as they have been shifted.

For air and aether are separated off from the great mass that surrounds, and what surrounds is unlimited in quantity.

For of the small there is no smallest, but always a smaller; for it cannot be that what is is not. But of the large too there is always a larger. And it is equal to the small in quantity, and in relation to itself each thing is both large and small.

Since this is so, one must suppose that there are many things of every kind in everything that is being combined, and seeds of all things, with all kinds of shapes and colors and flavors. And that human beings were compounded, and the other animals that have soul. And that these human beings have cities they have settled and works they have built, as we do, and that they have a sun and a moon and the rest, as we do, and that the earth grows for them many things of every kind, the most useful of which they gather into their dwellings and use. This, then, is what I have said about separation: that separation would take place not only here with us but elsewhere too.

These things having been divided in this way, one must recognize that all things are no fewer and no more (for there cannot be more than all), but all are always equal.

And since the shares of the large and the small are equal in number, in this way too all things would be in everything; nor can they be apart, but all things have a share of everything. Since there cannot be a smallest, it could not be separated, nor come to be by itself, but just as in the beginning, so now too all things are together. In all things there are many things, and of the things being separated off there are equal numbers in the larger and in the smaller.

So that we cannot know the number of the things being separated off, either by reasoning or in fact.

The things in the one world are not separated from one another, nor cut off with an axe—neither the hot from the cold nor the cold from the hot.

These things thus rotating and being separated off by force and speed. And speed produces force. Their speed is like the speed of no thing now found among human beings, but is in every way many times as fast.

For how, he says, could hair come from what is not hair, and flesh from what is not flesh?

In everything there is a share of everything except Mind; and there are some things in which Mind too is present.

And when Mind began to set things moving, there was separating off from everything that was being moved, and all that Mind moved was divided off; and as things were moved and divided, the rotation made them divide much more.

And Mind, which always is, is very much now too where all the other things are as well—in the great mass that surrounds, and in the things that have been joined on, and in those that have been separated off.

The dense and the wet and the cold and the dark came together here, where the earth now is, while the rare and the hot and the dry went out to the far reaches of the aether.

From these, as they are separated off, earth is compacted; for from the clouds water is separated off, from water earth, and from earth stones are compacted by the cold, and these move farther out than water does.

The sun puts the brightness into the moon.

We call Iris the sun’s reflection in the clouds. It is a sign of storm; for the water that pours around the cloud has made wind or poured out rain.

Anaxagoras said a great deal about this, saying that when the Dog Star rises people begin the harvest, and when it sets they begin working the land; and he adds that the Dog Star is hidden for forty days and as many nights.

Because of their weakness, he says, we are not able to judge the truth.note

Anaxagoras in the Physics says that what is called “bird’s milk” is the white in eggs.

For this reason, not even bearing to have their wills written, they are overtaken, and are forced to fill up twice over, as Democritus puts it.note

Tritogeneia, Athena, is held according to Democritus to be understanding. And from understanding come these three things: to reason well, to speak well, and to do what one should.note

Whoever means to be cheerful must not be busy with many things, either in private or in public, nor, in whatever he does, choose things beyond his own power and nature. He must keep such a guard on himself that even when fortune strikes and leads him on, to all appearances, toward more, he sets it aside and does not take on more than he can manage. For a modest load is safer than a great one.note

For delight and lack of delight are the boundary of what is advantageous and what is not.

As to his date, he was born, as he himself says in the Little World-System, young when Anaxagoras was old, forty years younger than he. He says that the Little World-System was composed seven hundred and thirty years after the capture of Troy.

A human being must recognize, he says, by this rule, that he is cut off from reality.

This argument too shows that in reality we know nothing about anything, but for each of us belief is an inflowing.note

And yet it will be clear that to know in reality what each thing is like is beyond our means.

Now, that in reality we do not understand what each thing is or is not like has been shown in many ways.

There are two kinds of judgment, the one genuine, the other obscure. To the obscure belong all these: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The genuine is separate from this.

When the obscure can no longer see into anything smaller, nor hear nor smell nor taste nor perceive by touch, but one must search into what is finer, then the genuine comes in, which has an instrument for thinking more finely.note

Whatever a poet writes with divine inspiration and a holy breath is very beautiful.

Homer, having been granted a nature touched by the gods, built an adornment of verses of every kind.

Of the learned among men, a few, raising their hands toward the place that we Greeks now call the air: “All things,” they say, “Zeus ponders; he knows all things, he gives and takes them away, and he is king of all.”

For medicine, according to Democritus, heals the diseases of the body, but wisdom frees the soul of its passions.

Intercourse is a small apoplexy. For a human being bursts out of a human being and is torn away, separated by a kind of blow.

Nature and teaching are closely alike. For teaching reshapes a person, and by reshaping makes a nature.

in the human being, which is a small worldnote

If anyone listens to these sayings of mine with intelligence, he will do many things worthy of a good man, and will leave many bad things undone.note

Whoever chooses the goods of the soul chooses what is more divine; whoever chooses the goods of the body chooses what is merely human.

It is fine to stop someone who is doing wrong; if you cannot, at least do not join in the wrong.

One should be good, or else imitate the good.

People are happy not through their bodies or their money, but through rightness and wide understanding.

Keep away from wrongdoing, not out of fear, but because you ought to.

It is a great thing, in misfortune, to think as one should.

Regret for shameful deeds is the saving of a life.

One should speak the truth, not speak at length.

The one who does wrong is more wretched than the one who is wronged.

Greatness of soul is bearing an offense calmly.

It is seemly to give way to the law, to the one in authority, and to someone wiser.

When worthless people find fault, the good man takes no account of it.

It is hard to be ruled by someone worse than oneself.

Someone wholly mastered by money could never be just.

For persuading, a word often turns out to be stronger than gold.

Whoever admonishes a man who thinks he has sense labors in vain.

Many who have never learned reason live in accordance with reason; and many who do the most shameful things cultivate the finest words.

Fools learn good sense when they meet misfortune.

It is the deeds and actions of virtue, not its words, that one should strive to emulate.

Fine things are recognized and pursued by those whose nature is suited to them.

In cattle, good breeding is strength of body; in human beings, it is a good disposition of character.

The hopes of those who think rightly can be attained; those of fools are impossible.

Neither skill nor wisdom can be attained unless one learns.

It is better to examine one’s own faults than other people’s.

Those whose ways are well ordered have their lives set in order too.

Goodness is not refraining from wrong, but not even wanting to do it.

It is fine to praise fine deeds; to praise bad ones is the work of a counterfeiter and a cheat.

Many who have learned many things have no sense.

One should cultivate much thinking, not much learning.

It is better to deliberate before acting than to repent afterward.

Do not trust everyone, only those who have proved themselves: the first is simple-minded, the second is the mark of a sensible person.

A worthy man and an unworthy one are known not only from what they do but also from what they want.

For all human beings the good and the true are the same; but what is pleasant differs from one person to another.

Desiring without measure belongs to a child, not a man.

Ill-timed pleasures breed displeasure.

Violent cravings for any one thing blind the soul to everything else.

Just love is reaching for what is beautiful without doing violence.

Accept nothing pleasant unless it is beneficial.

For the foolish, it is better to be ruled than to rule.

For the childish, the teacher is not reason but misfortune.

Fame and wealth without intelligence are not safe possessions.

Making money is not useless; but making it by wrongdoing is worse than anything.

It is a grievous thing to imitate the bad, and not even to want to imitate the good.

It is shameful to busy oneself with other people’s affairs and be ignorant of one’s own.

Always putting things off leaves actions unfinished.

Those who do everything in word and nothing in deed are counterfeit, good only in appearance.

The cause of error is ignorance of what is better.

Whoever does shameful things should first be ashamed before himself.

Someone who contradicts and chatters a great deal is ill suited to learning what he should.

It is greed to do all the talking and be unwilling to listen to anything.

One must keep watch on the bad man, in case he seizes his opportunity.

The envious man pains himself as though he were his own enemy.

An enemy is not the one who does wrong, but the one who wants to.

Hatred between kin is far harsher than hatred between strangers.

Do not be suspicious of everyone, but be cautious and secure.

One should accept favors with a view to repaying them with greater ones.

When you do a favor, look closely at the one receiving it, in case he proves false and repays good with evil.

Small favors at the right moment are the greatest to those who receive them.

Honors carry great weight with the sensible, who understand what it means to be honored.

The generous man is not the one who looks to the return, but the one who has chosen to do good.

Many who seem to be friends are not, and many who do not seem to be are.

The friendship of one intelligent man is better than that of all the unintelligent.

Whoever has not even one good friend does not deserve to live.

A man whose tested friends do not stay with him long has a difficult temper.

Many turn away from their friends when they fall from plenty into poverty.

In everything, the equal is fine; excess and deficiency are not to my liking.

Someone who loves no one, it seems to me, is not loved by anyone either.

An old man is charming when he is pleasant-spoken and his talk is serious.

Beauty of body is merely animal, unless there is intelligence beneath it.

In good fortune a friend is easy to find; in bad fortune, hardest of all.

Not all relatives are friends, but those who agree about what is to their advantage.

Good things barely come to those who seek them; bad things come even to those who do not.

Those who love finding fault are not suited by nature to friendship.

A woman should not practice argument; that is a dreadful thing.

To be ruled by a woman would be the ultimate outrage for a man.

It is the mark of a divine mind always to be thinking out something fine.

Those who praise the unintelligent do them great harm.

It is better to be praised by someone else than by yourself.

If you don’t recognize the praises, take it that you are being flattered.

For I came to Athens and no one knew me.

Democritus himself, at any rate, used to say, so they report, that he would rather discover a single causal explanation than have the kingdom of the Persians become his.

People have fashioned an image of chance as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness. For chance fights against understanding in only a few things, and most things in life are set straight by an intelligent sharpness of sight.

By convention color, by convention sweet, by convention bitter; in reality atoms and void.

Poor mind, you take your evidence from us, and then you throw us down? Our overthrow is your own fall.note

all those that wander in a wavelike way along their course

People who scratch themselves feel pleasure, and the same thing happens to them as to people having sex.

They think divine things with their mind.

whatever one might think of

Music, he says, is more recent, and he gives the reason, saying that it was not necessity that separated it off: it arose from what was already surplus.

For speech is the shadow of action.

reason, already nourished within and taking root in itself, and, in Democritus's words, accustoming itself to draw its delights from itself

For pigs, he says, take more pleasure in mud than in clean water, and they go wild over filth.

For the navel, as Democritus says, is the first thing to grow in the womb, an anchorage against tossing and drifting, a cable and a vine-tendril for the fruit that is being begotten and is still to come.

If you open yourself up from inside, you will find a motley storehouse and treasury of ills, full of many sufferings, as Democritus says.

We must, as Democritus says, dismiss the arguments of wranglers and strap-twisters.note

For in a shared fish there are no bones.

No thunderbolt, as Democritus says, fails to hold the pure gleam from the clear sky.

Nor will he treat reputation with contempt, shunning the effort to please those around him, as Democritus demanded.

Standing in line, says Democritus, with what gives it light, it takes up and receives the sun.note

extolling animals, whose pupils, as Democritus declares, we have been in the most important things: of the spider in weaving and mending, of the swallow in building houses, and of the sweet-voiced ones, the swan and the nightingale, in song, by imitation

If a cone were cut by a plane parallel to its base, what should we think of the surfaces of the segments—do they turn out equal or unequal? If they are unequal, they will make the cone uneven, since it will have many step-like notches and roughnesses. But if they are equal, the segments will be equal, and the cone will turn out to have the property of the cylinder, being made up of equal, not unequal, circles—which is utterly absurd.

Thing is no more than nothing.note

He urges people to learn thoroughly the art of politics, since it is the greatest, and to pursue the labors from which great and splendid things come to human beings.

people thinking new thoughts every day

If the body took it to court over all the pains and ill-treatment it had suffered throughout its life, and he himself were to be the judge of the charge, he would gladly vote against the soul, on the grounds that it had ruined parts of the body through neglect and weakened them with drunkenness, and had corrupted and torn apart other parts with its love of pleasure—just as, when a tool or a vessel is in bad condition, one blames the person who used it carelessly.

For Democrates said that living badly—without understanding, self-control and piety — is not living badly but taking a long time to die.

For animals, he says, flock together with animals of their own kind, doves with doves and cranes with cranes, and likewise with the other creatures that lack reason. And the same happens with lifeless things, as you can see with seeds being sifted and with pebbles on the beaches. In the one case, through the swirling of the sieve, lentils are sorted out and ranged with lentils, barley with barley, and wheat with wheat; in the other, through the movement of the wave, oblong pebbles are pushed into the same place as the oblong ones, and round ones to the round, as though the likeness in these things had some power to bring things together.

This is what I say about all things.

A human being is what we all know.note

Democritus says that certain images come near to human beings, and that some of them do good and others harm; that is why he even prays to meet with propitious images.

that a whirl of shapes of every kind was separated off from the whole

Don’t be eager to know everything, or you may end up ignorant of everything.

Happiness belongs to the soul, and so does unhappiness.

Happiness does not dwell in herds or in gold; the soul is the dwelling-place of one’s guardian spirit.note

The very things from which good comes to us are the things from which we could also reap harm—though we could also stay clear of the harm. Deep water, for example, is useful for many things, and yet it is harmful too, since there is a risk of drowning. So a remedy was found: teaching people to swim.

For human beings, bad things grow out of good ones when someone does not know how to guide the good things and handle them skillfully. It is not right to count such things among bad things; they belong among the good ones from which they come. And good things can also be used, if anyone wishes, as a defense against bad ones.

The cheerful person, who is always drawn toward just and lawful deeds, is glad, strong and free of care, awake and asleep. But the one who pays no heed to justice and does not do what he ought finds all such things joyless whenever he remembers any of them; he is afraid, and he reproaches himself.

The gods give human beings all good things, both long ago and now, except whatever is bad, harmful and useless. These things the gods neither gave human beings long ago nor give them now; people run into them by themselves, through blindness of mind and lack of judgment.

Chance is lavish with gifts but unreliable, while nature is self-sufficient. That is why, with what is smaller but secure, it beats the greater thing that hope holds out.

Fine words do not dim a bad action, nor is a good action spoiled by slanderous words.

The worst of all things for bringing up the young is easy living; for it is this that gives birth to those pleasures from which badness comes.

If children are let loose outside the home and not made to work hard, they will learn neither letters nor music nor athletics, nor what most of all holds virtue together, a sense of shame; for it is from these above all that shame tends to arise.

Education is an adornment for the fortunate and a refuge for the unfortunate.

Anyone who uses encouragement and the persuasion of reason will prove a better guide to virtue than one who uses law and compulsion. For a person kept from wrongdoing by law is likely to do wrong in secret, whereas a person led to what is right by persuasion is not likely to do anything amiss, either in secret or openly. That is why someone who acts rightly out of intelligence and knowledge proves at once brave and upright in judgment.

Learning achieves fine things through hard work, but shameful things are reaped of their own accord, without work. * For it often keeps a person from being like that, even against his will; so much does it depend on a great natural gift.

There is, I suppose, intelligence in the young and lack of intelligence in the old; for time does not teach understanding—timely upbringing and nature do.

Constant association with bad people increases a habit of badness.

The hopes of the educated are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

Thinking alike makes friendship.

It is fitting for human beings to take more account of the soul than of the body. For perfection of soul corrects the defects of its bodily frame, but strength of frame without reasoning makes the soul no better at all.

The boundary between what is advantageous and what is not is enjoyment and lack of enjoyment.

The best thing for a person is to go through life with as much cheerfulness and as little distress as possible. And this would happen if one did not take one’s pleasures in mortal things.

One should steer clear even of talk about bad deeds.

For people achieve cheerfulness through moderation in enjoyment and a life in due proportion. Deficiencies and excesses tend to change suddenly and to set up great movements in the soul; and souls that are moved across great intervals are neither stable nor cheerful. So you should set your mind on what is possible and be content with what you have. Pay little attention to those who are envied and admired, and don’t dwell on them in thought; look instead at the lives of those who are suffering, and consider how badly they are faring, so that what you have and possess may seem great and enviable, and it may no longer happen that your soul suffers from wanting more. For the person who admires those who have much and are called blessed by other people, and who dwells on them in memory every hour, is always compelled to contrive something new and, driven by desire, to go so far as to do something irreparable that the laws forbid.

It’s easy to praise and to blame what one shouldn’t, but each is the mark of a bad character.

It is the task of understanding to guard against wrongdoing before it comes; not to retaliate against it once it has happened is a sign of insensibility.

The great delights come from looking at fine works.

Images, splendid in dress and adornment to look at, but empty of heart.

Forgetting one’s own ills breeds rashness.

Fools are shaped by the gains of chance, but those who know about such things by the gains of wisdom.

What is in need knows how much it needs; the person in need does not recognize it.

Fools, though they hate life, want to live out of fear of Hades.

Fools live without enjoying life.

Fools long for a long life without enjoying a long life.

Fools long for what is absent, and they waste what is present, though it is more profitable than what is past.

In fleeing death, people pursue it.

Fools are pleasing in nothing throughout their whole life.

Fools long for life instead of old age, because they fear death.

Fools, fearing death, want to grow old.

One should choose not every pleasure, but only pleasure in what is fine.

A father’s self-control is the greatest lesson for his children.

For self-sufficiency in food, the night is never short.

Chance sets a lavish table, self-control a sufficient one.

Self-control increases what is delightful and makes pleasure greater [still greater?].

Sleeping in the daytime signals trouble in the body, or distress in the soul, or idleness, or lack of education.

Courage makes disasters small.

The brave man is not only the one who overcomes his enemies, but also the one who masters his pleasures. Some men are masters of cities but slaves to women.

The glory of justice is boldness and fearlessness of judgment; the end of injustice is fear of disaster.

Undismayed wisdom is worth everything, since it is the most precious thing of all.

Only those who hate doing wrong are dear to the gods.

Wealth that comes from bad work acquires a disgrace that is all the more conspicuous.

Desire for money, if it isn’t limited by having enough, is far harder to bear than the most extreme poverty. For greater desires create greater wants.

Bad gains bring the loss of excellence.

The hope of bad gain is the beginning of loss.

Amassing too much money for one’s children is a pretext for love of money, and it exposes one’s own character.

What the body needs is readily available to everyone, without toil or hardship. But whatever needs toil and hardship and makes life painful is not what the body longs for. It is what a badly tuned judgment longs for.

Desire for more destroys what one has, becoming like Aesop’s dog.note

One should speak the truth; that is far better.

Frankness belongs to freedom. The danger lies in judging the right moment.

Misers share the fate of the bee: they work as if they were going to live forever.

The children of misers grow up ignorant. They are like the dancers who leap onto swords: if, as they come down, they miss the one single spot where they must plant their feet, they die. It is hard to hit that one spot, for only room for the soles of the feet has been left. In the same way these children too, if they miss their father’s pattern of carefulness and thrift, tend to be ruined.

Thrift, you know, and even hunger are useful. But at the right time, so is spending. It takes a good man to recognize which is which.

A life without feasts is a long road without inns.

A sensible man is one who does not grieve over what he doesn’t have but rejoices in what he has.

Of pleasant things, the ones that come most rarely give the most delight.

If one went beyond due measure, the most delightful things would become the least delightful.

People pray to the gods for health, and they don’t know that they have the power over it in themselves. Through lack of self-control they do the opposite, and they themselves become traitors to their health through their desires.

Some people take their pleasures from the belly and go beyond the right measure in food or drink or sex. For all of them the pleasures are brief and last only a short while, as long as they are eating or drinking, and the pains are many and long. For the desire for the same things is always there. Whenever what they desire arrives, the pleasure passes quickly, and there is nothing good in these things but a brief delight. Then the same things are needed all over again.

It is hard to fight against anger. But mastering it is the mark of a man who reasons well.

All contentiousness is senseless. It keeps its eye on whatever will harm the opponent and does not see its own advantage.

For whoever vies with his better ends up with a bad name.

Oaths made in tight corners are not kept by worthless people once they have got away.

Labors taken on willingly make it easier to endure the ones we don’t choose.

Constant labor grows lighter than itself through habit.

More people become good through practice than by nature.

All labors are more pleasant than rest when people attain what they labor for, or know that they will attain it. But with every failure, all labor is equally painful and wretched.

Even when you are alone, don’t say or do anything base. Learn to feel shame before yourself far more than before others.

The laws would not stop each person from living as he pleased, if one person did not harm another. For envy is what starts civil strife.

Living abroad teaches self-sufficiency in life. Barley-cake and a bed of straw are the sweetest cures for hunger and weariness.

The law wants to benefit human life. But it can do so only when people themselves want to be treated well, for it shows its own excellence to those who obey it.

Civil war is bad for both sides. For the winners and the losers alike, the ruin is the same.

Only through concord can great works be accomplished, and only through concord can cities carry through their wars. Otherwise they cannot.

Poverty in a democracy is as much preferable to what is called prosperity under autocrats as freedom is to slavery.

One must count the affairs of the city as more important than everything else, so that it may be well run. One must not be contentious beyond what is fair, nor claim power for oneself beyond what serves the common good. For a well-run city is the greatest mainstay. Everything is contained in it: when it is preserved, everything is preserved, and when it is destroyed, everything is destroyed.

It doesn’t pay good men to neglect their own affairs and attend to other things, for their private affairs would go badly. But if someone neglects public affairs, he gets a bad name, even if he neither steals nor does any wrong. And even one who does not neglect them and does no wrong runs the risk of getting a bad name, and of actually suffering something as well. For mistakes are inevitable, and it isn’t easy for people to be forgiven.

When bad men take office, the more unworthy they are when they take it, the more careless they become, and the more they are filled with folly and recklessness.

Sometimes those who have the means bring themselves to lend to those who have nothing, and to help them and do them favors. In that, at last, there is compassion. There is also no one left alone, people become comrades and defend one another, and the citizens are of one mind. There are other good things too, more than anyone could list.

Justice is doing what ought to be done. Injustice is not doing what ought to be done, and turning aside from it.

With some animals, the matter of killing or not killing stands like this. Whoever kills those that do harm and want to do harm is guiltless, and for well-being it is better to do this than not.

One must kill, at all costs, everything that does harm contrary to justice. Whoever does this will have a greater share of cheerfulness, justice, confidence and property in every ordered society.

Laws have been written against hostile vermin and creeping things. It seems to me that one should do the same in the case of human beings, and kill an enemy according to ancestral laws in every ordered society where law does not forbid it. What forbids [killing?] by law is each people’s local sacred rites, truces and oaths.

Anyone who kills a highwayman or a robber of any kind would be guiltless, whether he does it with his own hand, by giving the order, or by his vote.

One must avenge those who are wronged as far as one can, and not let it pass. Doing so is just and good, and not doing so is unjust and bad.

Some people do things that deserve exile or imprisonment, or they deserve a fine. They must be condemned, not acquitted. Whoever acquits them against the law, and makes his decision by gain or pleasure, does wrong, and this is bound to lie heavy on his heart.

The greatest share of justice and excellence belongs to the one who apportions the greatest [honors] of merit to those who most deserve them.

One should feel no more shame before other people than before oneself. One should do wrong no more readily if no one is going to know than if everyone is. One should feel shame before oneself above all, and set this up as a law in one’s soul, so as to do nothing unfitting.

People remember mistakes more than things done well. And that is just. Someone who returns a deposit should not be praised, while someone who does not return it should get a bad name and be punished. The same holds for the magistrate, for he was not elected to do badly, but to do well.

Under the constitution as it now stands, there is no way to stop magistrates from doing wrong, even if they are thoroughly good. For it falls to no one else but himself to come, in his turn, under the power of others. But these matters too must somehow be arranged so that the man who does no wrong will not come under the power of wrongdoers, however strictly he scrutinizes them. Some ordinance, or something else, must protect the one who does what is just.

By nature, ruling belongs to the superior.

Fear produces flattery, but it has no goodwill in it.

Daring is the beginning of action, but chance is master of the end.

Use household slaves like parts of your body, one for one task, another for another.

The beloved woman [?] undoes the reproach of love.

Democritus said that the man who is lucky in his son-in-law has found a son, while the man who is unlucky loses his daughter as well.

A woman is far sharper than a man at devising mischief.

Few words are an adornment for a woman. Simplicity of adornment is fine too.

Raising children is risky. Success comes full of struggle and worry, and failure brings a grief that no other pain can surpass.

I don’t think one should have children. In having children I see many great dangers and many griefs, and few things that flourish, and those few are slight and feeble.

If someone needs to have a child, I think it is better for him to take one from among his friends’ children. Then he will have the kind of child he wants, since he can choose the kind he wishes, and the one who seems suitable would most likely follow in accordance with his nature. This makes all the difference: here one can take a child to one’s liking from many, as the need may be. But if someone has one of his own, there are many dangers, for he has to make do with whatever child he gets.

People think that having children is one of the necessities, arising from nature and some ancient institution. This is clear in the other animals too. They all have offspring by nature, not for the sake of any benefit. But when one is born, each parent toils and rears it as best it can, fears greatly for it while it is small, and grieves if anything happens to it. Such is the nature of everything that has a soul. But among humans it has by now become a custom that some benefit should also come from one’s offspring.

As far as possible, one should divide one’s property among one’s children, and at the same time keep an eye on them so that they don’t do anything ruinous when they have it in hand. For at once they become much more careful with money and keener to acquire it, and they compete with one another. When the fund is shared, expenses don’t hurt as they do when it is one’s own, and gains don’t cheer as much, but far less.

Without spending much of one’s own, one can educate one’s children and put a wall and protection around both their property and their persons.

Among sores the spreading ulcer is the worst disease. In the same way, the worst thing in money matters is failing to adjust and keeping on without a break.

Used with sense, money is useful for generosity and for the public good. Used with folly, it is a public outlay, and a senseless one (?).note

Poverty and wealth are names for want and fullness. So the man in want is not rich, and the man not in want is not poor.

If you don’t desire many things, a few will seem many to you. For small desire makes poverty as strong as wealth.

One must recognize that human life is feeble and short, and mixed up with many ills and hardships, so that one may attend to moderate possessions and toil without measure over what is necessary.

Fortunate is the man who is cheerful with moderate means, and unfortunate the man who is gloomy with great ones.

Want that everyone shares is harder than any one person’s, for no hope of help is left.

Sickness happens to a household and to a life, just as it does to a body.

It is unreasonable not to give way to the necessities of life.

Use reasoning to knock out the ungoverned grief of a soul grown numb.

Bearing poverty with good grace is the mark of a man of moderation.

The hopes of the unintelligent are unreasonable.

Those who take pleasure in their neighbors’ misfortunes do not understand that what fortune brings is common to all, and they have no joy of their own.

Strength and good looks are the goods of youth, but moderation is the flower of old age.

The old man was once young, but it is uncertain whether the young man will reach old age. So the good that is already complete is better than the one that is still to come [if] and uncertain.

Old age is a maiming of the whole body: it has everything and lacks everything.

Some people do not know about the dissolution of mortal nature, but they are conscious of the wrongs they have done in their lives. So they spend their lifetime in turmoil and fear, making up false stories about the time after death.