From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 107
rearranges the texts, but provides concordances to enable the reader to trace a
particular fragment.
6 The Penguin Classics collection Early Greek Philosophy [2.6] translated by
Jonathan Barnes carefully presents the fragments with some of the necessary
material from the surrounding context, sufficient, in most cases, to enable the reader
to get some sense of the basis for the writer’s understanding of the text. On the
absolute necessity for paying heed to this context in any serious work on Heraclitus
see Osborne [3.31]. The two recent editions of Heraclitus (Kahn [3.7], Robinson [3.
9]) are both seriously inadequate, in that they provide virtually nothing of the
context for the fragments.
7 Thinkers condemned or criticized for impiety are usually revising the conventional
theology rather than denying any place for divine beings. Anaxagoras (apparently
condemned at Athens in c.430 BC) introduced a divine ‘mind’ as the governing
cause of the way the world is. Socrates was accused of introducing new gods. His
divine sign was perceived as a deity exclusive to himself, and hence constituted a
kind of private religion that appeared as a threat to the community in a Greek polis.
8 Religion is mentioned as the last topic in Heraclitus’ book by Diogenes Laertius [3.
12] (Lives IX.5) but it is unlikely that the edition he knew was Heraclitus’ own. I
deal with it first, partly to emphasize its place in his thinking, partly because the
sayings on the subject are classic examples of his style of thought, and raise
important issues of a general nature.
9 See below ‘The Unity of Opposites’.
10 On the rituals for homicide involving purification with blood see Parker [3.20], app.
6, 370–4.
11 Reading allōs with the manuscript and Kahn [3.7], Robinson [3.9], Marcovich [3.
2], rather than allōi (with further blood) which was an emendation suggested by
Fränkel and adopted by Kranz in DK (5th edn and later).
12 The text is preserved entire in the Theosophia, an anonymous Christian collection
of pagan material from c.500 AD; it is also paraphrased in some other texts,
assembled by Marcovich [3.2], 455–8. The second part (quoted below) is also
recorded by Celsus (apud Origen); see n. 16.
13 Kahn [3.7], 266; Robinson [3.9], 78; Burkert [3.19], 309; Parker [3.20], 371–2, for
example.
14 See below ‘Heraclitus’ style”.
15 Heraclitus seems to use the word ‘human’ to contrast with god, whose method of
purifying is the sacred one. In what follows I shall sometimes use ‘religious’ or
‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ which is our normal terminology for the distinction he is
making, sometimes ‘divine’ and ‘human’ which is Heraclitus’ terminology, e.g. in
B78 and B119.
16 This second part of B5 is quoted not only in the Theosophia (see n. 12) but also by
Celsus (preserved in Origan’s Against Celsus) and is discussed at some length by
Origen. Celsus takes the fragment to be a comment on the correct use of religious
images and its dependence on the believer’s proper understanding of the gods.
Origen responds by hijacking the fragment for his own ends.
17 See below, ‘The Unity of Opposites’.
18 B61. The text is preserved by Hippolytus of Rome [3.13], a Christian bishop of the
early third century AD, in the Refutation of all Heresies IX.10. This section of the