The Theology of Heraclitus: a Presocratic Pantheism

39have not found the opposite expression "to die a deathl in myIlnited readlng of Greek, but I hazard the guess that i.n alaoguage abounding in cognate accusatLve expressions (lheyfeared a fear, !1sked a r16k, etc.) the phrase 'diea death'would certainly be intelligible even though unconnon. However,thesetcogdates'are the only words that are aecep!abledirect object6 !o the verbs of living and dyillg. Usage andconhon sense both forbid us to live anythlng other than a'11fe'or to clle something besides a rdeath'.6Because Heraclitusrexpressed words "living the death ... dying the l-ife'ldo Itot seenr to heed this prohlbi!ion, translators and connentatorsoften slnply render the Greek 11tera11y and then tag1t asI hopelessly obscure | . Sone!imeg they nay xesort toexplanallons so confused ,:r confuslng that they put theorlginal to shaoe (in ny optnlon Marcovlchr s tortured exegesls,pp.240-1 , does this).What seerns to ne to be the nost 1ike1y answer to a1lthi6 obscurity ts that H. has dellberately said "1tv1ng thedeath" $here the listener irould expect to hearI livinBthelifer. In other rrords, H, seEs us up for the expected \rordrltfe' and ins!ead he jars us to our senses lrrilh the surpr16e!rordrdeath'- Thls unexpccted substitution of Jdeathr for"1r is true, however, that Creek does a1lolr lypes of relationshipsother than the direct object to bo expressed by lhe accusative case. Weftnd, e.9,, another type of accusatlve, the tenporal accusative, comnonlyapplied to verbs of livtng in order to shon hor long a person llves (solloneric H)'Dn, 5:ven .,221t .Hdt. 3,22). But this tenporal accusatlve cannotbe the one used in fr.62, Nussbaum resorts to lhe grab-bag "accusative ofrespectrr which yields results not firuch better than the tenporal sccusativejudStng fron her entangled explanatlon of the sense (Nussbaurr,l63).