Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

96
Anthony A. Long
true] things in accordance with their nature”, echoes Heraclitus’ programmatic
statements in B 1, where he presents himself as the spokesman
of nature’s logos, setting forth an account of the way things are. 14
His audience, as he regretfully says there, continually fail to heed his account,
because they retreat into their private worlds. Here, in B 112, he
asks us to take the message of B 1 to constitute the essence of sôphronein,
glossing that virtue as speaking and doing things that are true.
What does Heraclitus mean by “doing things that are true”? Kahn
(1979, 122) puzzles over this curious and seemingly unparalleled expression.
He suggests that Heraclitus wants to say that “the man whose
thinking is sound will not hide the truth but signify it in his actions
as in his words”. This suggestion does not go far enough, in my opinion.
Taking our lead from Plato, we shall hardly go wrong if we endow Heraclitus’
alÞthea with connotations of straightness, balance, and due proportion.
Thus his “truths”, as the context of B 112 requires, are
norms of properly measured action as much as they are norms of
thought and speech.
Plato regularly couples “balanced” (metrios) with such commendatory
words as sôphrôn, kalos, katharos, aristos, and bebaios. 15 In the Republic
(3, 412a5) the most musical and harmonious person is the one who
best combines physical and musical education and applies them to his
soul in the most measured way (metriôtata). The mark of an unmusical
and unshapely soul is ametria (6, 486d5). These contexts are in line
with the passage I already discussed from the Gorgias, but the Republic
proposes still more precise connexions between rationality and balance
or proportion.
Reviewing the newly formulated community, Socrates invites his
interlocutors to agree that it could be called sôphrôn and “master of itself”
if its better constituent rules over its worse one (4, 431b). He continues:
You would also find especially among its children and women and slaves
… a multitude of all kinds of desires and pleasures and pains … but simple
and moderate ones, which are guided by logismos in association with intellect
and correct opinion – these you would encounter only among a few
people, ones with the best natural constitution and the best education.
ja· lµm ja·t²rcepokk±r ja·pamtodap±r 1pihul¸ar ja· Bdom²r teja·
k¼par 1m pais· l²kista %m tir evqoi ja· cumain· ja· oQj´tair … t±r d´ce
14 I fail to see why Kirk 1962, 390, characterizes B 112 as “a banal paraphrase”.
15 E.g. R. 3, 399b8: syvqºmyr te ja· letq¸yr; 5, 466b6: l´tqior ja· b´baior ja·
%qistor; Phd. 86c2: jak_r ja·letq¸yr; 108c3: jahaq_r teja·letq¸yr.