[52] Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Heraclit., from whom Hippolytus is probably quoting, says that in his boyhood, Heraclitus used to say, he knew nothing, in his manhood everything. Has Hippolytus garbled this?
[53] There is nothing of this in what Hippolytus, Diogenes Laertius or any other author extant gives as Empedocles’ opinions. τὰ κακά seems to be equivalent to δαίμονες, as suggested in n. on p. [39] supra. Hippolytus returns to Heraclitus’ opinions in Book IX, II, pp. 119 ff. infra.
[54] So Diog. Laert., II, vit. Anaximander, c. 1, verbatim.
[55] κόσμοι. He therefore believed in a plurality of worlds.
[56] οὐσία. It may here mean essence or being. A good discussion of the changes in the meaning of the word and its successors, ὑπόστασις and πρόσωπον, is to be found in Hatch, op. cit., pp. 275-278.
[57] μετέωρον, a phenomenon in the heavens, but also something hung up or suspended.
[58] στρογγύλον, used by Theophrastus for logs of timber.
[59] Lit., “from the separation of the finest atoms of the air and from their movement when crowded together.”
[60] So Roeper. Cruice agrees.
[61] A. W. Benn, op. cit., p. 51, gives a readable account of Anaximander’s speculations in physics. Diels, op. cit., pp. 132, 133 shows in an excellently clear conspectus of parallel passages the different authors from whom Hippolytus took the statements in our text regarding the Ionians. The majority are to be found in Simplicius’ commentaries on Aristotle, Simplicius’ source being, according to Diels, the fragments of Theophrastus’ book on physics. Next in order come Plutarch’s Stromata and Aetius’ De Placitis Philosophorum, many passages being common to both.