From the Beginning to Plato

106 HERACLITUS
Why does Heraclitus tell us about the oracle? Plainly the polysemie language
of the Pythian Oracle bears some resemblance to the polysemie language of
Heraclitus’ own utterances, which play upon the multiple significance available
to different readers, and from different syntactical construal of the phrases. But
perhaps the difficulty of interpreting the oracle without a context to fix the sense,
to make it speak directly instead of hinting at a meaning that is unobtainable, also
tells us something about the way in which language is itself wholly dependent
upon context for its shared significance as part of what is common; and thus the
oracle alerts us to the way that language functions, and hence to the sources of
unity and opposition to which Heraclitus hopes to draw our attention, if we could
but hear what he has to say.
NOTES
1 Heraclitus belonged to the city of Ephesus during a period when it was under
Persian domination. He was probably of an aristocratic family, and he is likely to
have lived in the latter part of the sixth century and early part of the fifth century
BC. From fr. 40 it is evident that he is working in a period after Pythagoras,
Xenophanes and Hecataeus. He shows no knowledge of Parmenides, but there
might be grounds for thinking that Parmenides alludes to Heraclitus (compare
Parmenides B6.7 with Heraclitus B51 for example).
2 This feature adds to the difficulty, since when poetry is involved the metrical
constraints can sometimes provide a key to reconstructing a reliable text, or more
particularly determining which words are quoted and which paraphrased.
Heraclitus does have a characteristic style (see below, ‘Heraclitus’ style’) which
can sometimes be recognized in dubious quotations (e.g. the habit of placing a
word so that it plays more than one role in the sentence, cf. B1), and some
fragments retain the Ionic dialect forms, though the absence of these need not mean
that a fragment is not authentic.
3 There is one relatively lengthy passage known as fragment B1, which appears to
belong to the beginning of Heraclitus’ work. This is quoted by more than one
ancient author, and implies that Heraclitus’ work circulated as a written prose
treatise, though it is possible that the written version was not prepared by
Heraclitus himself. Diogenes Laertius, whose life of Heraclitus is extremely
unreliable, reports a story that Heraclitus deposited his book in the temple of Artemis
in such a way that it would be inaccessible to the general public (Diogenes Laertius
[3.12], IX.6). If there is any truth in this it implies that Heraclitus had charge of the
written version of his own treatise.
4 See the excursus ‘On reading Heraclitus’ in Kahn [3.7], 87–95, and Osborne [3.
31], 1–11, 23–4.
5 The standard Greek text of the fragments is that of DK [2.2]. In this collection the
fragments thought to be genuine are listed in section 22B. The letter B prefixed to a
fragment number indicates its presence in this collection. The order of fragments in
DK is primarily determined by the alphabetical order of the quoting authorities, a
procedure deliberately adopted by Diels to avoid imposing his own interpretation in
assembling a sequence of texts. Robinson [3.9] retains DK’s order. Kahn [3.7]