[384]. Περὶ διαίτης, i. 5. I should read thus: ἡμέρη καὶ εὐφρόνη ἐπὶ τὸ μήκιστον καὶ ἐλάχιστον· ἥλιος, σελήνη ἐπὶ τὸ μήκιστον καὶ ἐλάχιστον· πυρὸς ἔφοδος καὶ ὕδατος. In any case, the meaning is the same, and the sentence occurs between χωρεῖ δὲ πάντα καὶ θεῖα καὶ ἀνθρώπινα ἄνω καὶ κάτω ἀμειβόμενα and πάντα ταὐτὰ καὶ οὐ τὰ αὐτά, which are surely Herakleitean utterances.
[385]. Arist. de An. Α, 2. 405 a 25 (R. P. 38). Diels attributes to Herakleitos himself the words καὶ ψυχαὶ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀναθυμιῶνται, which are found in Areios Didymos after fr. 42. I can hardly believe, however, that the word ἀναθυμίασις is Herakleitean. He seems rather to have called the two exhalations καπνός and ἀήρ (cf. fr. 37).
[386]. Περὶ διαίτης, i. 5, χωρεῖ δὲ πάντα καὶ θεῖα καὶ ἀνθρώπινα ἄνω καὶ κάτω ἀμειβόμενα.
[387]. We seem to have a clear reference to this in Epicharmos, fr. 2, Diels (170 b, Kaibel): “Look now at men too. One grows and another passes away, and all are in change always. What changes in its substance (κατὰ φύσιν) and never abides in the same spot, will already be something different from what has passed away. So thou and I were different yesterday, and are now quite other people, and again we shall become others and never the same again, and so on in the same way.” This is put into the mouth of a debtor who does not wish to pay. See Bernays on the αὐξανόμενος λόγος (Ges. Abh. i. pp. 109 sqq.).
[388]. Sextus quotes “Ainesidemos according to Herakleitos.” Natorp holds (Forschungen, p. 78) that Ainesidemos really did combine Herakleiteanism with Skepticism. Diels, on the other hand (Dox. pp. 210, 211), insists that Ainesidemos only gave an account of the theories of Herakleitos. This controversy does not affect the use we make of the passage.
[389]. τὸ περιέχον ἡμᾶς, opposed to but parallel with τὸ περιέχον τὸν κόσμον.
[390]. The popular word is used for the sake of its paradoxical effect. Strictly speaking, they are all mortal from one point of view and immortal from another.
[391]. We need not hesitate to ascribe to Herakleitos the view that the dead become guardian demons of the living; it appears already in Hesiod, Works and Days, 121, and the Orphic communities had popularised it. Rohde, Psyche (pp. 442 sqq.), refused to admit that Herakleitos believed the soul survived after death. Strictly speaking, it is no doubt an inconsistency; but I believe, with Zeller and Diels, that it is one of a kind we may well admit. Many thinkers have spoken of a personal immortality, though there was really no room for it in their systems. It is worthy of note in this connexion that the first argument which Plato uses to establish the doctrine of immortality in the Phaedo is just the Herakleitean parallelism of life and death with sleeping and waking.
[392]. These fragments are quoted by Plotinos, Iamblichos, and Noumenios in this very connexion (see R. P. 46 c), and it does not seem to me possible to hold, with Rohde, that they had no grounds for so interpreting them. They knew the context and we do not.
[393]. Plut. def. orac. 415 d, ἔτη τριάκοντα ποιοῦσι τὴν γενεὰν καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον, ἐν ᾧ χρόνῳ γεννῶντα παρέχει τὸν ἐξ αὑτοῦ γεγεννημένον ὁ γεννήσας. Philo, fr. Harris, p. 20, δυνατὸν ἐν τριακοστῷ ἔτει αὖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον πάππον γενέσθαι κ.τ.λ. Censorinus, de die nat. 17, 2, “hoc enim tempus (triaginta annos) genean vocari Heraclitus auctor est, quia orbis aetatis in eo sit spatio: orbem autem vocat aetatis, dum natura ab sementi humana ad sementim revertitur.” The words orbis aetatis seem to mean αἰῶνος κύκλος, “the circle of life.” If so, we may compare the Orphic κύκλος γενέσεως.