Hermann Diels on the Presocratics: Empedocles' Double Destruction of the Cosmos ("Aetius" II 4.8)

Hermann Diels on the Presocratics: Empedocles' Double Destruction of the Cosmos ("Aetius" II4.8)Author(s): Denis O'BrienSource: Phronesis, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 1-18Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182633 .

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Hermann Diels on the Presocratics: Empedocles' double destruction of the cosmos

(Aetius ii 4.8)

DENIS O'BRIEN

ABSTRACT

Stobaeus records a placitum where Empedocles says that the world is destroyed by the domination in turn of Love and of Strife. The placitum makes perfectly good sense in the context of Empedocles' belief that Love and Strife produce, in turn, a non-cosmic state of total unity (Love) and of total separation (Strife). But for over two hundred years scholars have been unable to hear that simple message.

Sturz (1805) emended the text so as to make it fit the non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles that he had taken over from the pages of Tiedemann (1791). When Diels included Stobaeus' text in his edition of Aetius, in the Doxographi graeci (1879), he failed to remove the emendation, although his own reconstruction of the chapter heading in Aetius made the emendation impossible. Twenty years later, Diels saw the light, and printed Stobaeus' placitum, unemended, in his Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta (1901) and in successive editions of his Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (from 1903 onwards). But Kranz resurrected the emendation in the Nachtrage to his sixth edition of the Frag- mente der Vorsokratiker (1951). The emended placitum is used again by Uvo Holscher (1965) to support a non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles and is repeated in the latest collection of the fragments and testimonia (Brad Inwood, 1992).

Holscher fails to appreciate that the text that he uses to support his reconstruction is merely Sturz's translation into Greek of the non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles proposed by Tiedemann at the end of the eighteenth century.'

The publication of Diels' Doxographi graeci in 1879 brought one immediate and long-lasting benefit to the attempted reconstruction of early Greek philosophy. Studies of the Presocratics up to that time are littered with references to Plutarch, Stobaeus, Galen and Eusebius. From Diels'

Accepted September 1999 ' The article which follows is the revised text of a lecture given at the University

of Leiden in May 1997, in the course of a Symposium held to celebrate the publication of Jaap Mansfeld and David Runia, Aetiana: the method and intellectual context of a doxographer, vol. i, The sources, published in the series Philosophia antiqua n? 73 (Brill: Leiden, 1997). I am most grateful to Luc Brisson, Christopher Rowe and Suzanne Stern-Gillet for comments on the written version of my text.

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000 Phronesis XLV,]



2 DENIS O'BRIEN

edition onwards, the multiplicity of names is swept away, and replaced by a single reference: Aetius.

To take only one example at random, the belief attributed to Empedocles that South is the right-hand side of the universe, and North the left-hand side. When Friedrich Wilhelm Sturz published the first would-be complete collection of material relating to Empedocles, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in 1805, he listed as authorities for that belief, in four separate and consecutive footnotes, the relevant passages from Plutarch's Placita philosophorum, from Eusebius' Praeparatio evangelica, from Ga- len's Historia philosopha and from Stobaeus' Eclogae physicae.' A quarter of a century later, in 1830, Simon Karsten, in his edition of Empedocles, groups those four authors in a single footnote, but still has to give a separate reference for each one of them.3 Contrast this with Diels' own edition of the fragments and secondary sources relating to Empedocles, in his Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta, published in 1901. There you will find the same belief given a single reference: Aetius, book two, chapter ten, section two.4

2 F.W. Sturz, Empedocles Agrigentinus, de vita et philosophia eius exposuit carminum reliquias ex antiquis scriptoribus collegit recensuilt illustravit praefationemn et indices adiecit Miagister] Frider/icusi Guilfielmus] Sturz (Lipsiae, 1805), pp. 335-6. The passages quoted are as follows. - Pseudo-Plutarch, Placita philosophorunt ii 10, p. 85.8-9 ed. J. Mau, Plutarchi Moralia, vol. v, fasc. 2, pars 1, Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1971). - Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica xv 41.2, p. 411.22-3 ed. K. Mras, Eusebius Werke, Band viii 2, Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte n" 43.2 (Berlin, 1956); 2' ed. E. des Places (Berlin, 1982). - Pseudo-Galen, Historia philosopha xi 10, ? 53, p. 623.15-16, ed. H. Diels, Doxographi graeci, collegit recensuit prolegomenis indicibusque instruxit H.D. (Berolini, 1879). (The 'editio iterata' of Diels' Doxographi graeci [Berolini et Lipsiae, 1929], and the 'editio tertia' [Berolini, 1958], are both of them unchanged reproductions of the one and only original edition, published in 1879.) - Stobaeus, Eclogae physicae i 15.6 (last sentence), i 147.17-18 ed. C. Wachsmuth (Berolini, 1884). For all four authors I give references to the standard modem editions, which are of course, in every case, later than Sturz. In referring to pseudo-Plutarch and to pseudo-Galen, I let drop the 'pseudos' as often as not, merely for convenience.

3 S. Karsten, Empedoclis Agrigentini carminum reliquiae, de vita eius et studiis disseruit, fragmenta explicuit, philosophiam illustravit S.K., in Philosophorum graecorum veterum praesertim qui ante Platonem floruerunt operum reliquiae, recensuit et illustravit S.K., volumen alterum (Amstelodami, 1838), p. 426 n. 105.

1 H. Diels, Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta, vol. iii, fasciculus prior of Poetarum graecorum fragmenta, ed. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Berolini, 1901), p. 92.6-9 (? SA50). For the text in question (Aetius ii 10.2), see Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 339a8-10, b16-18.



HERMANN DIELS ON THE PRESOCRATICS 3

That single reference does not represent a mere saving in time and space. Much more importantly, the smaller reference represents the greater truth. Plutarch, Stobaeus, Galen and Eusebius are not independent wit- nesses to Empedocles' supposed belief. The truth of their report stands or falls on the authority of a single witness, which chance and circumstance have conveyed to us under the names of four separate authors. The obvious parallel is with the classification of manuscripts. Four separate manuscripts may represent four separate traditions, each of them having its independent authority, and each needing therefore to be quoted separately in the apparatus criticus to a text. Equally, our four manuscripts may be transcribed from one another, or from a common archetype. In that case, when they are taken account of at all, they are properly represented by a common siglum in the apparatus, and are properly considered en bloc as a single testimony to the original reading of the author in question. Diels' achievement is to have demonstrated that much of the doxographical material recorded by Plutarch, Stobaeus, Galen and Eusebius is of the latter type, and that, for these particular texts, all four authors, however interesting they may be as types or as individuals, have evidential value only in so far as they bear witness to a common source.

But admirable though it was in principle, Diels' achievement remains, for us, riddled with difficulties, with doubts, and even with downright errors. I say that without in any way meaning to disparage Diels as a person or a scholar. Diels achieved almost more than mortal man might hope for, not only by the publication of his Doxographi graeci, but no less in his editions of Galen and Simplicius, in his Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta and not least in his monumental Fragmente der Vorsokra- tiker, a work which, for the last sixty years, no-one has had the energy or the ability to bring up to date. Having done so much, could Diels pos- sibly have done more? Can we even reasonably expect him to have done better? I doubt it.

The fact remains that, inevitable and excusable though they may be, the difficulties and the imperfections in Diels' working out of his hypothesis are many and serious. That is sufficient reason why, today, over a hundred years after the publication of Diels' flawed masterpiece, Jaap Mansfeld and David Runia are much deserving of our thanks in under- taking to re-think Diels' handling of the complex and confusing body of texts which they have grouped under the title of Aetiana.



4 DENIS O'BRIEN

I

To show how necessary this new work is, I shall here take only a single sample passage. In the text I have selected, I shall hope to show that Diels is in serious error, not in principle, but in practice. By that I mean that I shall leave intact Diels' general hypothesis, on the relation of the texts in question to a common source, Aetius. What I shall claim to show is that, in the passage I have chosen to consider, Diels is mistaken, and significantly so, in the working out of his hypothesis. I do so of course with all due trepidation. In attempting to prove Diels wrong, there is the thrilling possibility that I shall myself be convicted of error. But why not live dangerously?

Even in limiting myself to a single text, I am going to have to move fast. In pseudo-Plutarch, there is a chapter entitled On coming-into-being and on passing-away (H!^Epi yrvE?acx cac pOop&;) and a separate chapter entitled On whether the cosmos is imperishable (Ei &(pOapto; o ic6o'o;). Both chapters are short. The first has three paragraphs only, the second has four.5 Confusingly, the same material appears in Stobaeus, but arranged differently. Stobaeus also has a chapter, a very long chapter, entitled 1rp' yEV?a?o; Kai pOop&;.6 He has no chapter entitled Ei 6iwOapro; o

)c6oao;. The three paragraphs from Plutarch's Hepi yEVEGe5; Kaict oop&q are repeated in Stobaeus' chapter of the same name.7 That same chapter in Stobaeus also contains, though in a different order, the four paragraphs listed by Plutarch under the title Ei 6(pOcapro; o xo6aoo;.

Those are the raw facts. What has Diels made of them? Diels retains the two titles given by Plutarch.9 Under the title Hcp' yEVEa?O; caz epOop&;,

he prints the three paragraphs listed under that title by Plutarch."' In a par-

I Pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil. i 24, [Ipi yEVr?aro; loi y0op&a (p. 74.13-25 ed. Mau), has three paragraphs. Pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil. ii 4, Ei "p6aptop o K6alIOq (p. 81.10- 20 ed. Mau), has four paragraphs.

6 Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20: [IEpit YcVaEW KQai %op&; (i 170.1-181.14 ed. Wachsmuth). 7 Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1I (i 170.4-5 ed. Wachsmuth), i 20.1Id [11 (i 170.14-19

ed. Wachsmuth), i 20.1d [2] (i 170.204 ed. Wachsmuth). I add, in square brackets, numbers corresponding to the sequence of paragraphs in Wachsmuth's edition of Stobaeus. I shall do the same for Mau's edition of Plutarch.

8 Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1 (i 170.10-12 ed. Wachsmuth), i 20.1' [1] (i 171.9-10 ed. Wachsmuth), i 20.1' [2] (i 171.11-12 ed. Wachsmuth), i 20.1' [8] (i 172.3-4 ed. Wachsmuth).

9 Aetius i 24: [kpi yEvEaeo; icad pOop&; (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 320). Aetius ii 4: Ei &ipOapTos 6 K6ojsoq (Diels, Doxographi graeci, pp. 330-2).

10 Aetius i 24.1-3, three paragraphs entitled l1epi ypVws' ; cai (pOop&; and printed in Diels' left-hand column (Doxographi graeci, p. 320a1 1-26), are taken from pseudo- Plutarch, Plac. phil. i 24 (74.13-25 ed. Mau).




allel column he prints the three corresponding paragraphs given under the same title by Stobaeus. 1 Under the title Ei a"pOapro; o KO6ago; he prints the four paragraphs given under that title by Plutarch, and, arranged in the same (Plutarchean) order, the four identical, or nearly identical, passages given by Stobaeus, but included by Stobaeus under a different title, the title irpi YEVFacw; Kcai pOop;.'2

So far, so good. To explain what has happened up till now, we need merely appeal to a phenomenon familiar in Stobaeus, and happily labelled by David Runia as the phenomenon of coalescence.'3 Stobaeus has included in a single chapter, and therefore under a single heading, material which in his source, Aetius, was divided between two or more chapters. The original chapter headings, and the original order of the lemmata, have been preserved by Plutarch.'4

Diels' next move is more daring. He takes five more paragraphs from Stobaeus' chapter lepi yvEvE(O; iKai pOop&c, and puts these too under the heading Ei 6pOxpro; 6o KOago;, despite the fact that there is no equivalent material for these chapters recorded in pseudo-Plutarch. '5 The common source, Aetius, is therefore now provided with a chapter of at least nine paragraphs, entitled Ei ap0apto; o 6oagoO;. Four of these paragraphs are listed under that title in Plutarch. All nine paragraphs are recorded by Stobaeus, but under a different heading, the heading Hpi pyEvEO; KaX pOopaS.

I Aetius i 24.1-3, three paragraphs entitled flEpi yevia?oy i%ca' (pOop&; and printed in Diels' right-hand column (Doxographi graeci, p. 320bl7-35), are taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.I' (i 170.4-5 ed. Wachsmuth), i 20.lV [1] (i 170.14-19 ed. Wachsmuth) and i 20.1d [2] (i 170.20-4 ed. Wachsmuth).

12 Aetius ii 4.1-2 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, pp. 330al5-331a3 and pp. 330bI6- 331b4) is taken from pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil. ii 4 [1] (p. 81.11-14 ed. Mau), and from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1' (i 170.10-12 ed. Wachsmuth), with additional material taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 21.6' (i 186.14-15 ed. Wachsmuth). (See below on the problem of the divided lemma.) - Aetius ii 4.10 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331a4-5, b24-6) is taken from pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil. ii 4 [2] (p. 81.15-16 ed. Mau), and from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1f [8] (i 172.3-4 ed. Wachsmuth). - Aetius ii 4.11 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 332al-2, bl-3) is taken from pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil. ii 4 [31 (p. 81.17-18 ed. Mau), and from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1f [2] (i 171.11-12 ed. Wachsmuth). - Aetius ii 4.12 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 332a3-5, b4-7) is taken from pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil. ii 4 [4] (p. 81.19-20 ed. Mau), and from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1f [1] (i 171.9-10 ed. Wachsmuth).

3 Runia, Aetiana, vol. i, pp. 217 sqq. Cf. Mansfeld, Aetiana, vol. i, p. 43. '4 Runia, Aitiana, vol. i, p. 193 n. 230 and p. 226 n. 92, warns us that, in this par-

ticular instance, Plutarch's order will need to be modified. '5 Aetius ii 4.6 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331bl2-15) is taken from Stobaeus,

Ecl. phys. i 20.If [4] (i 171.17-19 ed. Wachsmuth). - Aetius ii 4.7 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331b16-17) is taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1 [5] (i 171.20-1 ed.



6 DENIS O'BRIEN

Even that is only part of the story. Diels' reconstruction of the chapter Ei &ezpOap;o; o 6ic6'o; contains not nine, but fourteen paragraphs in all, five more of them taken from a different chapter in Stobaeus, with the added complication that, to accommodate the new material, a single lemma in Plutarch has to be split up to correspond to lemmata taken from two different chapters in Stobaeus.'6 But let us leave these complications aside.'" Let us look only at the paragraphs taken from Stobaeus' chapter Hept

yevEoeo, MXai pOop&; and printed by Diels under the title Ei i(pOapto; o agazo;. Let us look, more particularly, at the five paragraphs which have

no equivalent in Plutarch. One of these relates to Empedocles. It reads: 'Ene8oKxxj; [SC. (pTii] tOv xO6agov wOeipmoOal Kata TriV dcVTCIUKpa?tlaV TOlu

II

Empedocles' first modem editor, Wilhelm Sturz, in 1805, reads that entry in Stobaeus. It falls under the title FHepi YEvFowq iai (pOop&;. Since the entry appears exclusively in Stobaeus, Sturz has no reason to suppose, as Diels will do, that the entry came originally from a chapter with a quite different title. As illustration of the title IHpit YevECEo; icd wpOop&;, the paragraph ascribed to Empedocles is obviously incomplete. The chapter title in Stobaeus speaks of generation and destruction. The paragraph on

Wachsmuth). - Aetius ii 4.8 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331bl8-20) is taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1' [6] (i 171.22-3 ed. Wachsmuth). - Aetius ii 4.9 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331b21-3) is taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1' [7] (i 172.1- 2 ed. Wachsmuth). - Aetius ii 4.13 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 332b8-13) is taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1' [3] (i 171.13-16 ed. Wachsmuth).

16 Aetius ii 4.1, 3, 4, 5 and 14 (Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 330b16-17, p. 331b5- 11 and p. 332bl4-17) have been taken from Stobaeus, part of Ecl. phys. i 21.6' (i 186.14-15 ed. Wachsmuth), Eel. phys. i 21.6' [1], 6f [21, 6f [31 (i 187.9-13 ed. Wachsmuth) and part of Ecl. phys. i 21.3b (i 183.1-3 ed. Wachsmuth). The result of these various transpositions is that the first paragraph in pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil. ii 4 [1] (p. 81.11-14 ed. Mau), reappears in Diels as a double entry, Aetius ii 4.1-2 (Doxographi graeci, pp. 330a15-331a3), and is placed opposite texts taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 21.6' (i 186.14-15 ed. Wachsmuth) and i 20.1' (i 170.10-12 ed. Wachsmuth).

'7 Runia, Aetiana, vol. i, p. 193, has promised to deal with the question of the divided lemma (Aetius ii 4.1-2) in his second volume (unpublished). The difficulty is noted by Wachsmuth, in the Prolegontena to his edition of Stobaeus, vol. i, p. Xi.

18 Aetius ii 4.8, as reconstructed by Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331bl8-20, taken from Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1' [6] (i 171.22-3 ed. Wachsmuth).




Empedocles speaks only of destruction. Sturz was a methodical man. He sees the discrepancy. And he fills in the obvious lacuna by re-writing the paragraph to take account of both destruction and generation, as the chapter title in Stobaeus requires. The paragraph on Empedocles is therefore re-cast to become: 'ETgni8oKXi; [sc. pqai] rov 6ocagov (yiyvcaOat Kac) pOripeFa0a KcMr Ti1v avTEIulpraTElav To-0 VEIKOlU; wcat i; (pTlXa;.'9

Sturz is obviously to be congratulated on his clear-sightedness. Equally obviously, from a more narrowly textual point of view, the need for his emendation depends entirely on the relation of Empedocles' paragraph to the general title under which the paragraph falls in Stobaeus (Hlepi YEVEaEC; Kat ipOop&q). Once the paragraph on Empedocles is removed from its place in Stobaeus, and put under the quite different title to which Diels related it (Ei GiwOxapno; wo6ago;), then the emendation is seen to be otiose.

Indeed I would go so far as to say that if the text, as emended by Sturz, had been found in the manuscripts under the title to which it is attached by Diels, then we should have been very tempted to excise the words which Sturz had added. If the chapter heading is Ei &ipEapno; o K6ogo;, then a section which begins yiyvFraOoi iKai (ipeaOai ... would be imme- diately suspect, and would lay itself open to excision of the first infinitive, and so to the emendation [yiyveFaa tKait] POEiptO"Eat ... Which is of course a roundabout way of repeating my point that Sturz's emendation is pretty obviously no longer viable, once it has been detached from the chapter heading lHpi yEv?Car5; Kat pOop&; and joined to the material recorded in pseudo-Plutarch under the quite different heading of Ei a(pOapno; K6ago;.

And the reason I have laboured that point is quite simply to bring out how extraordinary it is that Diels, in his Doxographi graeci, nonetheless retains Sturz's emendation. He prints the paragraph in its new setting, under the heading Ei 6RpOCLpTo; o K6ago;, but retains the emendation 'ETe6oKX; [SC. PqnYi] 6OV KO?iOV (yivraOtl Kiax) 0pipeaOat. . . Even more extraordinary is it that Wachsmuth does the same. Wachsmuth, in the first volume of his edition of Stobaeus published in 1884, and so only five years after the publication of Diels' Doxographi graeci, duly marks

'9 Sturz, Empedocles Agrigentinus, p. 224. 20 Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331b18-20 (Aetius ii 4.8). Sturz is acknowledged

as author of the emendation. However, in repeating Sturz's emendation in his apparatus (Doxographi graeci, p. 331b18), Diels wrongly records the form yiveo0at. Sturz, Empedocles Agrigentinus, p. 224, had in fact written yyvwOda. It is Diels who has replaced Sturz's yyvraOca with Iv-Acat, the form common in later writers.



8 DENIS O'BRIEN

the paragraph on Empedocles as drawn from the chapter of Aetius which in Diels is entitled Ei &pOapTo; o Ko'ato;. Nonetheless, Wachsmuth still retains, as Diels had done, the emendation proposed by Sturz, an emendation whose plausibility relies precisely on the placing of the paragraph under the title Hcpti yevEGEW; Kai (pOop&;, a placing which Wachsmuth, by his reference to Diels, acknowledges, implicitly, as due solely to the erroneous setting that, according to Diels, has been given to the paragraph by Stobaeus.2'

We could of course take Wachsmuth at his word. We might tell ourselves that Wachsmuth is concerned exclusively with editing the text of Stobaeus, and that he is therefore entitled to prescind from the setting that the material which Stobaeus records may have had in any pre- Stobaean doxographical arrangement.22 From which we might think to conclude that Wachsmuth has retained Sturz's emendation because he believes that Stobaeus himself has added to the text words which are meant to confirm the placitum as being at home in its new (Stobaean) setting. And if that were so, a very important conclusion it would be indeed. For it would mean not only that Stobaeus has tinkered with the introductions to his lemmata - a practice nicely described by David Runia in volume one of his Aetiana,23 - but that he has also modified the content

21 For the placitum attributed to Empedocles, see Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 171.22-3 ed. Wachsmuth (Ecl. phys. i 20.1 [6]). At this point in his edition, Wachsmuth is unusually careless in the references he gives. In the rubric placed at the beginning of this sequence of texts (Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 171.8), Wachsmuth marks the entry on Empedocles as equivalent to Aetius ii 4.8, as reconstructed by Diels, Doxographi graeci, p. 331bl8-20. At least, this is obviously what he intends to do. To recover the reference to Diels from the information which Wachsmuth supplies at this point, we have to correct no less than two printing errors: for "H 4 [ .. 1 6. 10", read "H 4 [... 1 6-10", and for "p. 332 Diels", read "p. 331. 332 Diels". It is true that the first of these two errors is acknowledged in the Corrigenda et addenda placed at the beginning of vol. i of Wachsmuth's edition, p. XXXIV. But the correction is made only at the cost of a fresh error: for "171, 9", read "171, 8". Nor is all well with the reference to Sturz. Wachsmuth, in the apparatus to his edition, acknowledges Sturz as the author of the emendation given in his text (Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 20.1 [6], i 171.22-3 ed. Wachsmuth), where Wachsmuth, like Diels, writes yive&Oat, and not yiyvriOat. But in recording, in his apparatus (ad Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 171.22), the emendation proposed by Sturz, Wachsmuth again writes -yiveoat, exactly as Diels had done, although Sturz himself had written 'yiyveaoat (see the footnote preceding this). Is it too unwor- thy to suspect that Wachsmuth has simply copied his reference from Diels?

22 This obvious point is made - not for Stobaeus, but for Plutarch - by Mau, in the Praefatio to his edition of pseudo-Plutarch, Plac. phil., p. VIII.

23 Runia, Aetiana, vol. i, pp. 257-63.




of the placita he records in order to make them conform to their placing in his own re-arrangement of the material he has chosen to transcribe.

But such new and fascinating perspectives I fear are merely chimerical. Wachsmuth has repeated Sturz's emendation for no other reason than that he found it in Diels, while Diels has repeated the emendation because he found it in Sturz. Why then did Sturz emend the text? Not only for the reason I have given. To savour the paradox of Wachsmuth's and Diels' repetition of the emendation from Sturz, we need to go back again to 1805.

III

In 1805, Sturz has open before him Heeren's edition of Stobaeus.24 Inevit- ably, the placitum on Empedocles is given there under the chapter heading

ipi CvP orS Kat qpop&;.25 Not surprisingly, Heeren gives no indication that the paragraph has been placed in a setting other than the setting in which it had appeared in the source that Stobaeus was copying from. But not only has Heeren failed to anticipate Diels' Aetian hypothesis. By a remarkable act of prescience - of negative prescience - Heeren has denied in advance the implication of Diels' hypothesis. For in his note placed at the beginning of the chapter Hrpi yeviacw icad wOop&; Heeren duly reminds the reader that three of the paragraphs included in Stobaeus' chapter are repeated in pseudo-Plutarch and in Galen.26 Heeren is here merely repeating what Jaap Mansfeld has shown was a common-place of the scholarship of the time.27 But Heeren then adds "reliqua Stobaeus sibi vindicat."'28 "The remaining material Stobaeus claims as his own."

I doubt that, at the time, the expression sibi vindicat was more than a flourish of the pen. But in the light of what was to come that choice of expression was crucial. For Heeren here implicitly denies what will be

24 A.H.L. Heeren, loannis Stobaei Eclogarum physicarum et ethicarum libri duo ... Pars prima, Physica continens ... Partis primae tomus prior (Gottingae, 1792).

2S Heeren, Ioannis Stobaei Eclogarum physicarum et ethicarum libri duo ... Partis primae tomus prior, liber i, cap. 21, pp. 412 sqq. For the placitum on Empedocles, see pp. 416-17.

26 Heeren, loannis Stobaei Eclogarum physicarum et ethicarum libri duo ... Partis primae tomus prior, ad loc. (p. 412): "Nonnulla ex his leguntur quoque ap. Plut. de pl. ph. 1, 24 et Galen. c. X." For the passage from Galen, see Historia philosopha x 8, ? 39, pp. 619.20-620.2 ed. Diels, Doxographi graeci.

27 Mansfeld, Aetiana, vol. i, pp. 42-9. 28 Heeren, loc. cit.: "reliqua Stob. sibi vindicat." The reader will note that, despite

the sanctity of inverted commas, I have, in the body of my text, allowed myself to expand Heeren's abbreviation.



10 DENIS O'BRIEN

Diels' thesis, namely that the paragraphs found in Stobaeus and not found in Plutarch nonetheless derive from a common source. For Heeren's sibi vindicat surely implies that these additional paragraphs, including the paragraph on Empedocles therefore, are Stobaeus' own contribution to the material he has gathered, as distinct from the paragraphs duplicated in pseudo-Plutarch and in Galen. Seen in that light, Heeren's sibi vindicat could hardly have been better designed to put any proto-Diels off the scent. Stobaeus "claims as his own" the paragraph on Empedocles. That paragraph can therefore properly be corrected to match the placing it has in Stobaeus.

If Heeren's note is a plain invitation to Sturz to emend the passage, it should also have been a warning to Diels and to Wachsmuth that, in endorsing Sturz's emendation, they are tacitly endorsing a thesis contrary to their own. Why was that warning not heeded?

To support his emendation, Sturz, who is nothing if not generous in his transcriptions from ancient authors, quotes, at length, a whole string of texts, from Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, and from commentaries on Aristotle by Alexander, Themistius, Philoponus and Simplicius, all designed to show that Love and Strife are efficient causes, or 'making' causes, OTWlKLKa atuxla.29 Since Love and Strife are 'making' causes, they cannot, so Sturz implies, be causes only of destruction. Whether singly or jointly (a point I shall turn to in a moment), Love and Strife must be causes of generation as well as of destruction. The text of Stobaeus has to be emended accordingly: 'EntE8oKXia; [SC. pr1aij T6V Koi6iov (yiyvrEaO KaXi) pOeipEaTOt KaiTa -TrI'V &vTE7EtKpatElav To VEiKOX); Kat T iJ; ptXia;.

Despite its simplicity, despite its naivete even, it is that philosophical argument which I suspect has impressed Diels and has led him to include Sturz's emendation in the text of Aetius. If Sturz had defended his addition to the text by appealing to the chapter heading in Stobaeus, if he had appealed explicitly to the note which he no doubt read at the beginning of the chapter in Heeren, then presumably Diels would have realised that his own hypothesis, his own projected reconstruction of the text of Aetius, rendered Sturz's emendation useless. But, here as elsewhere, Diels has let himself be cowed by the heavy guns. Sturz, he thinks, understands the

29 I have decided not to weary the reader (and myself) by repeating the references given here by Sturz. Sturz, Empedocles Agrigentinus, pp. 224-9, lists some 25 passages from Aristotle and the commentators, as well as from Claudian and Plotinus, before casting his net even wider, Empedocles Agrigentinus, pp. 229-30, to include passages from Simplicius, Philoponus, Plutarch and Cicero on souls, fate and necessity.



HERMANN DIELS ON THE PRESOCRATICS 1I

philosophy of Empedocles, and can quote in his favour philosophical authors and philosophical arguments. Although these arguments have no very obvious connection with the texts Diels is editing, they must, he thinks, nonetheless be given priority in determining the views attributed to Empedocles, even when the attribution is made by an author (Aetius) who very likely had little or no personal, first-hand knowledge of the text of the poems.

So it is that Diels leaves in his text an emendation which he, of all people, should have seen was erroneous, since it is founded, tacitly, on a denial of Diels' own hypothesis.

IV

But the strangest part of the story is still to come. When he included Sturz's emendation in his Doxographi graeci, Diels was still a young man, barely in his thirties. Twenty years later, and by now in his fifties, Diels had come to see the error of his ways. For Sturz's emendation is not repeated in Diels' Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta, published in 1901, and it is therefore not repeated in the early editions of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.30 You may well be pleased, and even relieved. The story, you might think, has had a happy ending. Diels made a trivial slip when he edited the Doxographi graeci. Twenty years later he corrected himself when he came to edit Empedocles' fragments and testimonia in his Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta and in the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker ... But no. The ending of the story for Diels is only the beginning of the story for us.

Diels did not repeat Sturz's emendation when he edited the testimonia on Empedocles. But Sturz's emendation was resurrected by Walther Kranz, and was included in the Nachtrag to his so-called sixth edition of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.3' And from the decent obscurity of Kranz's

30 See H. Diels, Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta (1901), p. 92 (? 5A52), and Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch, 1st edn in one volume (Berlin, 1903), p. 170.8-9 (? 21A52). See also H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch, "Vierte Auflage, Abdruck der dritten mit Nachtragen", Band i (Berlin, 1922), p. 209.11-12 (? 21A52).

1' The so-called sixth Auflage of Diels' Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 Bande (Bande i-ii, Berlin-Grunewald, 1951-2; Band iii, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1952), is in fact a corrected reprint, with additional Nachtrage, of H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch, 5th edn, 3 Bande (Berlin, 1934-7). For our text, see Band i, p. 293.11-12 (? 31A52), and for Kranz's revival of Sturz's



12 DENIS O'BRIEN

Nachtrag Sturz's emendation has been dragged into the light of day, and presented in all its obscene irrelevance, by Uvo Holscher, in a lengthy article on Empedocles, published in 1965, an article which was to set a trend in Empedoclean studies for many years to come.32 Nor is that an end to it. Sturz's emendation is repeated in the most recent edition of Empedocles' fragments and testimonia, an edition prepared by Brad Inwood, who tells us that "the supplement [i.e. the addition of the two words yivcraOat Kca] is in Doxographi graeci, but not in Diels-Kranz".3 Inwood has obviously failed to note that the emendation is to be found in Diels- Kranz (in the Nachtrag to volume one). Much more seriously, Inwood has failed to ask himself why, having included the emendation in his Doxo- graphi graeci, Diels should have thought better of it in later life, and excluded the emendation both from his Poetatrum philosophorum fragmenta and from the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.

But at least Inwood repeats the emendation with the innocence of a soul in limbo. Not so Uvo Holscher. For Holscher has seen that, for all its seeming simplicity, Sturz's emendation carries a potential change in meaning that is fraught with significant philosophical consequences. Without Sturz's emendation, the immediate meaning of the placitum is that Empedocles' cosmos is subject to destruction in two ways, one destruction taking place as a result of the dominance of Love and another destruction taking place as a result of the dominance of Strife. With Sturz's emendation, a quite different meaning becomes possible: Empedocles' world comes into being by the dominance of one of the two powers (Love or Strife) and is destroyed by the dominance of the opposite power. On the first interpretation, the single infinitive, (p0ipeopae, 'to be destroyed', 'to perish', 'to pass away', has to illustrate, in turn, both the Eir1uprarlta of Love and the tKmpa'traa of Strife. There has to be a double destruction therefore. On the second interpretation, the two infinitives, yiveaiat icai

emendation, see the Nachtrag zum ersten Band (1951), p. 499.8. Kranz does not intend Sturz's emendation to be added to the text. He asks for no more than that "(yivEaOat

L) L pOeipeJOact Sturz" should be included in the apparatus. (Kranz, like Diels, writes yivea0at, not yiyvEaOat.)

32 U. Holscher, 'Weltenzeiten und Lebenszyklus, eine Nachpriifung der Empedokles- Doxographie', Hermes 93 (1965), pp. 7-33. For the text from Aetius, see p. 18 n. 4. Holscher, unlike Kranz, means us to include Sturz's emendation in the text.

33 B. Inwood, The poem of Empedocles, a text and translation with an introduction, in the series Journal of the classical association of Canada, supplementary volume 29 (Toronto/Buffalo/London, 1992), p. 172 n. 36. For my (low) opinion of Inwood's edition, see 'Empedocles revisited', Ancient philosophy 15 (1995), pp. 403-70.




pOFipeaOta, 'coming into being' and 'passing away', can be attached singly, one to Love and the other to Strife, or vice versa. That second interpretation is the interpretation adopted by Holscher, who claims that in Empedocles' philosophy there is a single cosmos issuing from the Sphere under the influence of Strife, with Strife as cause of generation and with Love as cause of destruction, in the world which issues from the Sphere.

That interpretation is one which I hold to be radically mistaken.34 But what concerns me for the moment is not so much the truth or falsity of Holscher's interpretation; my immediate aim is simply to bring out the justice - the poetic justice - of Holscher's grounding his interpretation on a pre-Dielsian emendation of the text of Stobaeus. For the interpretation which Holscher gave in 1965 (the first of several such interpretations of Empedocles, which were all the vogue in the sixties and seventies) was essentially a return to the non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles that had been taken for granted in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century."5 A non-cyclical reading of the fragments is to be found, for example, in the long and detailed chapter on Empedocles included in Dieterich Tiedemann's Geist der spekulativen Philosophie. Tiedemann believes, as Holscher will do, that there is a single world which issues from the Sphere, a world where Strife is cause of generation and where Love is cause of destruction. "Erstere [Love] macht aus vielen Eins, letztere [Strife] aus Einem vieles; jene [Love] also ist Ursache des Welt-Unterganges, diese [Strife], der Welt-Entstehung."36 "Love is cause of the world's destruction. Strife is cause of the world's coming-to-be." If I trouble to repeat Tiedemann's ipsissima verba, it is because they are taken from a page of Tiedemann's Geist der spekulativen Philosophie which is quoted by Heeren in his note on the placitum attributed to Empedocles by Stobaeus.37 If, as is more than

" See Empedocles' cosmic cycle, a reconstruction from the fragments and secondary sources, in the series Cambridge classical studies (Cambridge, 1969).

5 For my account of earlier interpretations, see Empedocles' cosmic cycle, pp. 156 sqq., and for my critique of Holscher, pp. 179-81. Holscher does at least retain a cos- mogony. Not so J. Bollack, Empedocle, [tome] i, Introduction a l'ancienne physique (Paris, 1965). With a sublime disregard for the context of the authors he is quoting from, Bollack adopts an almost avowedly neoplatonic interpretation of Empedocles' cosmic system, whereby the Sphere and the many exist contemporaneously. See my comments in Empedocles' cosmic cycle, pp. 159-63.

36 D. Tiedemann, Geist der spekulativen Philosophie, [vol. il, Von Thales bis Sokrates (Marburg, 1791), p. 251.

3' Heeren, Ioannis Stobaei Eclogarum physicarum et ethicarum libri duo ... Partis



14 DENIS O'BRIEN

likely, Sturz looked up the passage that Heeren referred him to, then he will have found, in German, virtually the very words that he was to translate into Greek and insert into the placitum of Empedocles recorded by Stobaeus.

The sad and awful truth is inescapable. As support for his non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles, Holscher appeals to a text which has been altered by Sturz precisely in order to accommodate an interpretation identical to the interpretation which Holscher seeks to draw from it. For in quoting Sturz's emended text as support for his non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles, Holscher is quoting not, as he supposes, the Greek of Aetius, nor even the Greek of Stobaeus, but a translation into Greek of the Germnan of Tiedemann's Geist der spekulativen Philosophie, a work where Tiedemann puts forward the interpretation of Empedocles which Holscher all unknowingly repeats...

V

When things are already so bad, one might hardly think they could get worse. But they do. The placitum, as emended by Sturz, is ambiguous. I have so far suggested that, in the emended version of the text, we take each of the two infinitives as attaching, singly, the one to Love and the other to Strife. But we could equally well take both infinitives as attaching jointly to each of the two powers. Love is responsible both for destruction and for generation. Strife is responsible not only for generation, but also for destruction. That interpretation Tiedemann did in fact put forward as an elaboration of the interpretation that I have already quoted from his Geist der spekulativen Philosophie.38 And it is that same interpretation which is adopted a few pages later by Sturz: "amicitiam interdum esse ortus causam, interdum interitus, ut discordiam."39 "Love, as Strife, is sometimes cause of birth, sometimes cause of destruction." Sturz therefore did not read his emended text in the way that Holscher was to do, a hundred

primae tomus prior, p. 417 n. r, quoting the placitum on Empedocles: "'De Empedoclis hoc placito cf. Tied. Geist der sp. Phil. p. 251."

" D. Tiedemann, Geist der spekulativen Philosophie, vol. i, pp. 251-2: "Im Gebrauche beyder Ursachen blieb der Agrigentinische Philosoph sich nicht uberall treu, durch den Zank erklarte er oft auch der Dinge Untergang, weil er zerstreut, durch die Freundschaft das Entstehen, weil sie sammelt." (I have corrected two misprints in the German.)

" Sturz, Empedocles Agrigentinus, pp. 252-3.




and fifty years later. Holscher supposes that Strife is responsible for coming-into-being, and that Love is responsible for destruction. Sturz himself, so far as one can tell, sees the meaning of the passage as that Love and Strife are independently responsible both for generation and for destruction. We are therefore faced with the further cruel paradox that Holscher adopts Sturz's emendation of the text of Stobaeus, but all unwittingly gives that emendation a different meaning from the meaning intended by Sturz.

And which is the true interpretation? Since the text is needlessly emended in the first place, the answer to that question becomes purely academic. But I cannot resist pointing out that, although the text as emended has been taken by Holscher as support for a non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles, that same text, as interpreted by Sturz, could in fact just as well be taken as support for a cyclical interpretation. For the claim that Love and Strife are, each of them, responsible, singly, both for generation and for destruction could be seen as no more than a para- phrase of Empedocles' own words, in the opening verse of our fragment 17, verses which formed part of the same sequence as the verses contained in the papyrus fragment recently unearthed by Professor Alain Martin in the University Library of Strasbourg: 6otii 6e &0vrv yEVEal;, 6otii 6' lXcOmpt;.

"Two-fold is the birth of mortal things, two-fold is their destruction."40 But once we return to Empedocles' own words, then we can see in an

entirely different light the passages quoted by Sturz, from Aristotle and from the commentators. As support for his emendation. Sturz claims that, according to Aristotle and to Simplicius, Love and Strife are 'makers', that they 'make' the world we live in, and that the text of Stobaeus must be emended accordingly. But the second step in that argument is false, or at best only half true. Even if we allow that Love and Strife are 'makers', what they 'make' is not, primarily, a cosmos, but a non-cosmic state, a state of total union (in the case of Love) and a state of total separation (in the case of Strife). That conception of the functions of Love and Strife gives meaning to the placitum recorded by Stobaeus in its unemended form, since the 'making' activities of both Love and Strife do have as their inevitable conclusion not the making, but the destruction of a cosmos.

40 The new papyrus has now been edited by A. Martin and 0. Primavesi, L'Empedocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665-1666), Introduction, edition et commentaire, with an English summary (Strasbourg/Berlin/New York, 1999). See p. 127 for the verse I have quoted (fr. 17.3).



16 DENIS O'BRIEN

Diels, as also Sturz and Holscher, and many other modem writers on Empedocles, has failed to see that point. And because he fails to see that point, because he fails to see the flaw in Sturz's philosophical arguments, Diels leaves in his Doxographi graeci an emendation which he, of all people, should have seen as erroneous. That emendation he later seeks to extract from his text. But the damage has been done. Kranz puts the emendation back into the text of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, where it is left ticking away, ready to explode, many years later, in the pages of Holscher and Inwood.

But I must stop there. The example I have given is only one of many booby-traps, lying in wait for would-be scholars who set out to stroll, unequipped and unprepared, through the pages of Diels' monumental Doxographi graeci. But have no fear. Jaap Mansfeld and David Runia are on their way. Let us wish them well in their brave resolve to render that dangerous terrain a safer place for the innocent and unwary.

Note

In quoting from pseudo-Plutarch, should I perhaps have given references to Lachenaud's edition, in the Bude collection, instead of to Mau's text, published more than twenty years earlier, in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana?4' Runia is kind enough to remark that Lachenaud's edition is "technically better than that of Mau".42 But can the Bude edition be taken seriously?

Consider, for example, the question of the title of the treatise. In only the second sentence of his Introduction (p. 5), Lachenaud tells us that "Le manuscrit M de Moscou donne le titre complet precede de la mention du 'philosophe Plutarque' et comprenant le terme de 'resume"'. But where, in Lachenaud's edition, is 'the complete title' to be found?

The title given in French, on the first page of Lachenaud's text, does begin with the word resume, but there is no mention of 'Plutarch the philosopher'. We read merely (p. 68, top of the left-hand page): "Resume des opinions des philosophes relatives a' la physique en cinq livres."

The title given in Greek, on the facing page, is even further removed from the 'complete title' that Lachenaud had promised in his Introduction.

41 See G. Lachenaud, Plutarque, tiEuvres morales, tome xii 2, Opinions des philosophes, texte etabli et traduit par G.L., in the Collection des Universites de France, publiee sous le patronage de l'Association Guillaume Bude (Paris, 1993).

42 Runia, Aeiana, vol. i, p. 179.




For Lachenaud's Greek title not only makes no mention of 'Plutarch the philosopher'; it does not even present the work as a resume. We read simply (p. 68, top of the right-hand page): Hcpi T&v aprGKOVTwV (pXoa6qoit;

Pvauci6v 8oygaowv l4Xixa C. To recover the 'complete title' supposedly contained in the manuscript

fom Moscow, Lachenaud's reader is left to make up his own Greek. I might suggest, as a possible retroversion from the French of Lachenaud's Introduction: Xouratpxov (pqXo(a6pou (or perhaps toi qnXoa6poi) irpi tGv apCsK0vTcov (wXoaY(pol, PV1; xdv oy8 rv eirntogij; Jlilxia c'.

But is this in fact the form of title that appears in the manuscript from Moscow? The reader of Lachenaud's edition has no means of knowing, for the title given in the Moscow manuscript, as described in Lachenaud's Introduction (p. 5), is clearly not the same as the title given in his text, and no readings from manuscript M are recorded at this point in the apparatus (p. 68.1-3).4

Worse still, from our present point of view, Lachenaud seems to be all at sea on the question of Aetius. Thus in his Introduction, pp. 15-18, Lachenaud appears to cast doubts on Diels' Aetian hypothesis, and casti- gates (p. 18) those scholars who "continuent impertubablement a citer Aetius, dans les notes de bas de page et les indices, alors qu'il con- viendrait de preciser si l'on cite le Ps.-Plutarque ou Stobee". But what this high-minded principle leads to in practice is a weirdly hybrid style of reference which corresponds neither to Diels' edition of Aetius nor to either of the two component authors (pseudo-Plutarch and Stobaeus).

Take, for example, the following reference, which the reader finds on p. 245 of Lachenaud's edition: "Stob. (Aet. I, 18 Ic = 58 B 30)." Only the last part of this reference is accurate: 58 B 30 refers to H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch, 5th edn, Band i (Berlin, 1934), chapter 58 (Pythagoreische Schule), section B (Anonyme Pythagoreer), item n? 30 (p. 460.3-6).

The reader who looks up the passage in Diels-Kranz will discover a placitum taken from Stobaeus, Eclogae physicae i 18.11 (i 156.11-15 ed. Wachsmuth), and included in Diels' Doxographi graeci as part of Aetius i 18.6 (pp. 316bl8-317b4 ed. Diels).

13 The word resume (eituog') appears only in the titles to individual books, from book two onwards.

4 The omission cannot be explained by Lachenaud's reverting to a so-called 'negative' apparatus. Not only would this be contrary to the practice adopted elsewhere in the volume; a 'negative' apparatus is possible only if the reading of the manuscript not included in the apparatus has been adopted in the text. Which is not the case here.



18 DENIS O'BRIEN

Lachenaud's 'Stob. (Aet. I, 18 lc)' is an impossible amalgam of these two sets of figures. The figures for book, chapter and paragraph given in Wachsmuth's edition of Stobaeus (i 18.1c) have been attached, in Lachenaud's reference, to the name of Aetius. The figures that should follow the name of Aetius, namely the figures for book, chapter and paragraph as given in Diels' edition of Aetius in his Doxographi graeci (i 18.6), do not appear in Lachenaud's reference at all.

The error is not only a material one. By substituting the name of Aetius for that of Stobaeus (and therefore in re-writing Wachsmuth's reference to Stobaeus, i 18.1c, as a reference to Aetius, i 18.1c), Lachenaud must imply that he agrees with Diels that the placita given in Stobaeus have been taken from Aetius, and that the arrangement of material adopted by Diels in the Doxographi is therefore, at least in principle, correct. But in that case what is the point of Lachenaud's complaint? How can it be right, in one and the same breath, to call into question Diels' hypothetical reconstruction of Aetius, as Lachenaud appears to do in his Introduction (p. 18), and yet to advocate quoting passages from Stobaeus as though they were taken from the text of the Doxographi, which is entirely based on that hypothesis?

Lachenaud should have the courage of his convictions: if Diels is wrong, then the text of Stobaeus should be quoted independently of Diels' edition of Aetius, as printed in the Doxographi.45

The strange inconsistencies in Lachenaud's edition are all the more remarkable when one reads the proud boast printed on the verso of the title page: Conformement aux statuts de l'Association Guillaume Bude, ce volume a ete' soumis a l'approbation de la commission technique, qui a charge' MM. Daniel Babut et Andre' Laks d'en faire la re'vision et d'en surveiller la correction avec M. Guy Lachenaud. What can Lachenaud's edition have been like before it was corrected?

Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris

11 The obvious way to avoid the anomaly of Lachenaud's hybrid style of quotation is either to give the reference to Stobaeus followed by a reference to Diels' reconstructed text of Aetius, and therefore: Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 18.1' (Aetius i 18.6), or to give a reference to Diels' reconstructed text of Aetius followed by a reference to Stobaeus, and therefore: Aetius i 18.6 (Stobaeus, Ecl. phys. i 18.l'). But this is in many ways a counsel of perfection, since Diels' edition of Aetius already contains the appropriate references to Stobaeus and to pseudo-Plutarch, while Wachsmuth's edition of Stobaeus includes references to Diels' Doxographi graeci.



Hermann Diels on the Presocratics: Empedocles' Double Destruction of the Cosmos ("Aetius" II 4.8)

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Transcript of Hermann Diels on the Presocratics: Empedocles' Double Destruction of the Cosmos ("Aetius" II 4.8)